Artwork Description:

Acrylic on Masonite. Piece commemorating the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Title selection is with regard to specific streets in the massacre. The background is a rendering of the historic "Black Wall Street" buildings and oil derricks being put to flame. The forefront consists of a rendering of a jovial take of a Tulsa, Oklahoma funk band created some 50 years after the massacre, a band that shares the same name as the title of the piece. Plastered diagonally across the work are two aircrafts; one being a traditional styled biplane that would have been a likely suspect in air support for the massacre, whereas the opposing plane is a fighter styled jet that was represented in the GAP Bands music video "You Dropped A Bomb". Traditional Muskogean pattern motifs across the bottom of the work, serve as a reminder of the proximity of similar acts of domestic terror. The feelings and rhetoric of the work is to convey a stance of "laugh to keep from crying".