What is a Klan Trophy?

Debunking a few myths and raising questions about who we really are as a city.

Maybe y’all saw the news that the Tulsa Pioneers Association monument in Owen Park is back in the news. People have called it a “Klan trophy” for a Klan barbecue, and there are all sorts of theories about this barbecue held in September, 1921. Throw in the fact that Tate Brady was involved in the BBQ and that it came three months after the 1921 Race Massacre, and suddenly the word Pioneer takes on a sinister connotation. The mind goes to dark places.

We need to separate myth from fact here. I’m going to go into the archives and reconstruct this barbecue—I think I can find the actual menu. If it was a secret Klan organization, why are there a handful of full-blood Mvskoke men there? There are certainly concentric circles between the Tulsa Pioneers and the Tulsa Klan, but what was the nature of that connection? I also suspect there were not a few “$5 Indians” in the Pioneers as well (people who fraudulently got themselves on the Dawes Rolls).

Anyway—before I get way down that rabbit hol…