ADA – Award-winning author, attorney and educator Hannibal B. Johnson will deliver East Central University’s Lou Watkins Lecture this spring, in which he will discuss Tulsa’s historic “Black Wall Street” and the terrible race massacre that plagued that community 100 years ago.
Due to continued safety precautions related to the Covid-19 pandemic, Johnson will deliver the lecture via Zoom at 7 p.m. on April 1. His lecture, based on his book Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples With Its Historical Racial Trauma, will be preceded with a question-and-answer session with ECU students.
Johnson is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a consultant specializing in diversity, equity and inclusion issues, human relations, leadership, and non-profit leadership and management. He has taught at the University of Tulsa College of Law, the University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State University.
Johnson serves on the 400 Hundred Years of African American History Commission, a federal body charged with the planning, development, and implementation of activities appropriate to the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Africans in the English colonies. In addition, Johnson chairs the Education Committee for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission and serves as local curator of its world-class history center, Greenwood Rising.
Johnson’s books chronicle the African American experience in Oklahoma and its indelible impact on American history. Johnson’s play, Big Mama Speaks – A Tulsa Race Riot Survivor’s Story, was selected for the 2011 National Black Theatre Festival and has been staged in Caux, Switzerland. He has received numerous honors for his works and community service.
The Lou Watkins Lecture honors the former chair of ECU’s Political Science department and brings recognized authorities to campus to address subjects of public interest at the local, state, and national levels. For more information or for the Zoom link for the 2021 Lou Watkins Lecture, email Dr. Christine Pappas at cpappas@ecok.edu. For more information about Johnson, visit his personal website at www.hannibalbjohnson.com.
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