Trail of Tears

In May 2024, Mike is crisscrossing Oklahoma, visiting First American lands and people and understanding their history and present. "Trail of Tears" refers to the forced relocation of First Americans from their historic lands to "Indian Territory" in the 19th Century. He is using the effort to raise money for cancer research at Dana-Farber as a supplement to his regular Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC) fundraising. Donations, large and small, are welcomed and can be made via this link.

Mike's travels will take him to the lands of the Comanche, Osage and Cherokee people, plus visits to the sites of his ancestors' homesteads. 8 days and 500 miles of riding, taking in the sights and the history along the way.

"I arrived in a Texas town, fresh from the North. Early Sunday morning I walked out and thought 'I will speak for Jesus to the first person who has leisure enough to listen to me.' And immediately before me sat a lone Negro. A little voice within me whispered, 'There is your man'. 'Mr. Man, may I sit next to you and talk of my friend Jesus?' 'Yessah, hep yo sef.' And there I preached Jesus to him."

-Thrilling Experiences of Frontier Life in Western Oklahoma", by La Fayette Cassler

Over the last two days, we've traveled over 200 miles east from Foss (Brother Cassler's home) to Tulsa, roughly following old Route 66. Route 66 was the first long distance highway, connecting Chicago to Southern California. Back in 2020, pre-COVID, I had made plans to travel the length of Route 66 by bike and then continue on to Boston -- there was something alluring about "getting my kicks on Route 66". The past two days brought an opportunity to get a taste of that -- all of the roadside kitsch you can imagine. The giant pop bottle. The Round Barn. The World's Tallest Gas Pump. Yep -- check, check, check!

I cut north to see some other unique Oklahoma sites: Cushing -- oil trading capital and home to the biggest tank farm in the world. Yale and the boyhood home of Jim Thorpe, Native American proclaimed "The Greatest Athlete in the History of the World" by the King of Sweden after winning the Olympic decathlon in record smashing fashion (Thorpe's response: "Thanks, King!").

From Yale, we took a short car ride on roads too rough for me to handle on a bike to the cemetery in the former town of Valley, abandoned during the Dust Bowl in the 1930's. This is final resting place of Cassler's wife Melvina, who died while visiting her daughter Ruth (my great-grandmother), as well as another set of great-great grandparents, the Girtons (the parents of the man Ruth married). The cemetery was massively isolated but filled with birdsong (we enjoyed seeing a Great Crested Flycatcher); a very peaceful place.

Today in Tulsa we visited Greenwood Rising, a museum addressing the horrors of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. Greenwood was a highly successful Black neighborhood with its own economy; that success bred resentment from the white Tulsans. An accusation that a Black man attempted to rape a white woman turned within hours to thousands of gun-toting, flame-brandishing whites torching dozens of blocks in Greenwood, indiscriminately killing hundreds of innocent Blacks -- ultimately thousands of dead, injured and homeless. As if that wasn't terrible enough, the riots were blamed on the Black community and insurers refused to pay claims. It took decades for Tulsa and Oklahoma to admit that the truth was covered up; more recent discoveries of mass graves have made tangible the extent of the tragedy.

We spent some time contemplating what happened and why. Sadly concluding "this kind of malevolence is part of mankind". That's not to excuse racism, or factionalism of any type. It means that we need to be watchful, and perhaps learn from the example of Jesus and Brother Cassler -- to be, truly, colorblind -- everything-blind -- as we interact with others.