Was Tulsa's Brady Street really renamed? Racial (in)justice, memory-work and the neoliberal politics of practicality

Bibliographic Data

ID3978071
AuthorsJordan P Brasher (0000-0002-2621-5320, Columbus State University, corresponding author), Derek H Alderman (0000-0002-5192-8103, University of Tennessee at Knoxville), Aswin Subanthore (Department of Geography, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA)
Year2020
Volume21
Issue9
Pages1223-1244
Publication date2020-11-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2018.1550580
OpenAlexW2903058851
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited31

In 2013, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma 'renamed' Brady Street in its downtown arts district to M.B. Brady Street and designated the road as Reconciliation Way to rid itself of ties to Wyatt 'Tate' Brady, the original namesake. Tate Brady, a Ku Klux Klan leader, participated in a 1921 massacre that killed, injured, and displaced many black Tulsans. Honoring M.B. Brady, a Civil War photographer with the same last name but no ties to Tulsa, was part of a neoliberal compromise to ensure the name change would have the least disruptive impact on the financial interests of white business owners on the road. The Tulsa case demonstrates how convenience and practicality—although represented as a matter of neoliberal 'nonpolitics'—is nonetheless a political technology used to justify sanitizing controversial histories and prioritizing capital accumulation over social justice. The faux renaming of Brady prompts a critical consideration of how neoliberalism weakens cities' ability to engage in the restorative 'memory-work' of recovering (from) past racial violence. Our study contributes to the study of neoliberal place naming, struggles over urban space and memory, and the possibilities and limits of street naming as a vehicle for (re)claiming a black sense of place

Archaeology · Capital (architecture · Criminology · Downtown · Economic Justice · Neoliberalism (international relations · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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