Tulsa History: October 2015 Archives

A memorial service for Lee Roy Chapman will be held Wednesday, October 14, 2015, at 4:00 p.m. at Cain's Ballroom. All are welcome. A fund for the benefit of his five-year-old son, Kasper, has been set up at GoFundMe. Friends are sharing memories on the "Remembering Lee Roy Chapman" page on Facebook. I've posted his curriculum vitae on a separate page and will add links as I am able.

Thursday night I got the news that Tulsa historian and artist Lee Roy Chapman had died. He was 46. Tulsa lost a passionate curator and narrator of its history, someone who delved into aspects of our city's past that aren't publicized as points of pride.

I first met Lee Roy at Coffee House on Cherry Street some years ago. This intense but soft spoken man with dark eyes and the bushy brown beard of a prophet introduced himself, squatted next to the table where I was writing and gave me two small pinback buttons, as he told me about his effort to rename the Brady District to honor Bob Wills. The buttons featured his own graphic art. One of the two buttons featured a jubilant Bob Wills, cigar in hand, superimposed with the word "REVOLT!" in yellow lightning-bolt letters.

The other button featured Bob Wills' 1948 Flxible Clipper tour bus, which he had traced to a field near Big Spring, Texas. Lee Roy hoped to bring the bus back to Tulsa, restore it, put it on exhibit, and take it on tour. He put an option on the bus to hold it until he could raise the money to bring it home. In June 2013, with the help of Loren Frederick, Bob's bus returned to Tulsa.

While I didn't always agree with the conclusions he drew, I always appreciated the passion and persistence Lee Roy brought to digging out the facts and then presenting his findings to the public in a compelling way.

For example, in 2011, Lee Roy and a team of people converted the storefront at 13 E. Brady, the location of Benny's Billiards in Francis Ford Coppola's Rumblefish and turned it into an art installation about the film. A video about the installation (embedded below) caught the attention of Chilean author Alberto Fuguet, who had been inspired by Rumblefish to write about the ordinary stuff of life. Fuguet had been working on a documentary about the film and its influence on Latin American writers and filmmakers. Fuguet had visited Tulsa a few months earlier and had been frustrated by his inability to connect with locals who loved and appreciated the film. Through the installation video, Fuguet connected with Chapman, who became his second-unit director, gathering footage of Rumblefish locations around Tulsa and allowing Fuguet to complete his homage, Locaciones: Buscando a Rusty James.

A man in the video says, "Lee Roy Chapman should be applauded for doing this.... That kind of energy and spirit really embodies what Tulsa is all about, in my mind, the best part of Tulsa."

I suspect that Rumblefish never caught the imagination of mainstream Tulsans because it was a Tulsa that had almost entirely succumbed to the urban renewal wrecking ball, a Tulsa that early '80s suburban mall rats didn't recognize as their own city.

Chapman was passionate about another body of artwork that mainstream Tulsa has ignored, the work of another curator of Tulsa's seamier side, photographer Larry Clark, whose 1971 book Tulsa depicted a teen underworld of drugs, guns, and sex. Chapman tried to persuade with Clark to do a retrospective of his work in Tulsa, as he had done in Paris, but without success; instead Chapman created a "guerrilla art installation," posting three-foot-by-five-foot prints of all of the images in the book in the ruins of the Big Ten Ballroom in north Tulsa. Photographer Western Doughty interviewed Chapman about the installation and published it in two parts on his blog: Part 1, Part 2. Here's what Chapman had to say about Tulsa's reaction to Tulsa, which gives you a sense of Chapman's own artistic mission:

[Clark's] work is representative of a whole side of Tulsa that still remains unseen. If it is ever seen by anyone, it's mocked. Tulsa tries to represent itself as this myriad of things, the first of which was the "Oil Capital of the World", but working to represent to the world wealth, class, prestige, and culture, there is a price; the working class has paid a price for that. And this book shows that price, all the drugs and violence, and all those excesses that come with being a part of the working class society. You're at war with main stream society, you're at war with the cops, and sometimes you're at war with yourself, and you can see that in the pages of this book. And for the book to be as well known, as influential as it has been, and for Tulsa not to have any representation of it here at all, not to have even tried, it's beyond neglect....

But the people who run the arts here, they want what every other city has. They want the A-lister stuff; they don't want anything that's organic. The formula has been that you have to move from here to become successful in the art world, either New York or L.A. I think some of that's changing, though, now....

Asked by Doughty if Clark's work had influenced him personally, Chapman replied:

Yeah, of course it has, to know that there is somebody living and running in not the same circles, but in similar circles, and has seen some of the things that I have. He was really one of the first photographers that documented the scene he was within, not coming as a photographer-colonizer. You know, "Oh, what a weird bunch. I think I'll take pictures of them." He was exposing his own secret. So I think that's the sign of a true artist, too. Of course, when you're dealing with other people, there are repercussions to that. But it's, for one, made me want to stay here in Tulsa and create, rather than going somewhere else. Two, it's made me want to force it on eyes that don't want to see it; I just think it's that important, not necessarily just his work, but that kind of work, that kind of organic, dirty, real work that only comes from the bottom up.

Chapman's last blog entry was about the Lew Clark Photography Studio on the west side of Peoria south of 15th Street. Lew and his wife Fran were Larry Clark's parents, and the little house that served as their studio, with the clock above the door and lighted portraits on display through the front windows, was a neighborhood landmark until a few years ago, when it was demolished for a parking lot.

It was Chapman who called attention to Tate Brady's connections to the Ku Klux Klan and vigilante justice. His exposé led to a public debate about Tulsa's founding father and the street, district, and neighborhood named in his honor. The debate received international attention and led to a compromise that left no one happy.

Chapman did some work for the George Kaiser Family Foundation (this silkscreen etching of Bob Wills from 2013) but that didn't stop him from taking some jabs at the billionaire and his incongruous ownership of Communist singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie's archives.

An inscribed first edition of Atlas Shrugged was found by George Kaiser, the billionaire banker and philanthropist, as he was unloading the materials from the back of truck last week.... Ms. Rand penned a nasty note on the title page; "Woody, you're a filthy [*******] hick. I hope you do gather all the poor together one day so they'll be easier to kill. One day a banker will own you. - Ayn"....

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George Kaiser Family Foundation is kicking out the big bucks for a large scale mural of Woody Guthrie on the Tulsa Paper Company building, soon to be home of the Kaiser owned Woody Guthrie Archives, in the Brady Arts District. Is this mural supposed to offset the fact that the Guthrie Green and the entire district, has no representation or historic relevance to the park's namesake?

The original namesake for the green was to be the same as the district where the park is located, W. Tate Brady, architect of the Tulsa Race Riot and a founder of the Tulsa Ku Klux Klan.

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This guitar's owned by George Kaiser

Woody Guthrie's 1930 Slingerland May Bell is owned by the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'll betcha Woody wrote Jolly Banker on this one.

Lee Roy worked with the libraries of Yale, Duke, and the University of Tulsa, finding for and selling to these institutions books and ephemera relating to Tulsa history. Thanks to his efforts, Yale and Duke Universities have copies of the limited-printing original edition of Mary Parrish's first-hand account of the Tulsa race riot.

Last year, Lee Roy was kind enough to give me a sneak preview of an album of photos that were taken in the Greenwood District as it was being rebuilt following the 1921 Race Riot. The photos showed stylishly dressed African-American young adults posing in Deep Greenwood, out in the countryside, and at what may have been the Acme brick pits. These photos are now in the University of Tulsa McFarlin Library Special Collections and viewable online.

My last interaction with Lee Roy was indirect. A few weeks ago, my wife and youngest son were driving down 15th Street in the middle of the day when she noticed that Oak Tree Books was open. She had bought some bookshelves when the store was going out of business and was surprised to see it open, so she stopped in. Lee Roy was there. They chatted about books, children (he has a son a few years younger than ours), schools and homeschooling, and music. When he figured out that they were connected to me, he handed her a cassette album to pass along to me: "The Bob Wills Story: The Life and Music of the King of Western Swing," narrated by Hugh Cherry. There's a little Post-It stuck to the front: "Michael -- hope yr well. Lee Roy Chapman."

("The Bob Wills Story" is available for listening online at bobwillsradio.com.)

I was out of town at the time on an extended business and personal trip. I had intended to stop by and thank Lee Roy when I got back in town a week ago Tuesday, but getting back into the routine of family life distracted me, and it slipped my mind. And now it's too late.

The doors of The Marquee on North Main in Tulsa. Silkscreen art by Lee Roy Chapman, from a portion of a photo of Bob Wills in Indian headdress, when he was honored by the Osage Tribe. Photo found at topix.net.

MORE:

Michael Mason of This Land Press posts a tribute, entitled "Lee Roy Chapman Is Still the King":

Last week brought the news that historian and journalist Lee Roy Chapman has passed away. Among the many roles he fulfilled, Chapman was a contributing editor at This Land and delivered some of our most well-known articles. He also hosted the Public Secrets video series, and was an ongoing resource in numerous other pieces. A polarizing yet beloved figure, Chapman leaves behind a rich legacy of scholarly work and groundbreaking journalism.

Below are links to the many works Chapman authored, along with videos in which he appeared. Besides being a skilled professional, Chapman was also a beloved colleague to many of us at This Land Press.

If your life has been enriched by Chapman's work, please consider donating to the Lee Roy Chapman Memorial Fund, the proceeds of which will go to the support of his son, Kasper Henry Chapman, age 5.

UPDATE 2015/10/13:

The Tulsa World and the Tulsa World Alumni Association have each posted an item about Lee Roy.

UPDATE 2015/10/20:

The video shown at Lee Roy's memorial, produced by Matt Leach, has been posted to Facebook. (I can't embed it here.)

Connor Raus has posted video of Lee Roy Chapman's 12-minute presentation "Twenty Shades of History Recovery" during PechaKucha 20x20 at Living Arts of Tulsa on April 12, 2013. It covers a range of topics, including the Race Riot, the impact of Brady District gentrification on the historic Greenwood District, Larry Clark, The White Dove Review, The Outsiders, Rumblefish, and Bob Wills's tour bus. It's a good overview of Lee Roy's range of interests and attitude.

So this is what I do. I read about this stuff, research it, and drive around and find this stuff. Some people care. Some people don't care. It doesn't pay. It's, like, horrible. I'm chronically unemployed. I'm obsessed....

In the Warsaw Ghetto, I don't think there's, like, an arts district named after Adolf Hitler. But Tate Brady is one of the few people that we know that actually participated in the Tulsa Race Riot, and did numerous other things.... If Woody Guthrie knew that he was in the Brady District, he would burn that park down....

Institutions aren't really that interested that much in what organically comes out of Tulsa. It's like it has to come from somewhere else....

(A quibble: To say that Tate Brady "participated" in the riot seems intended to lead the listener to conclude that Brady was part of the white mob that descended on Greenwood, killing African-Americans and torching their homes and businesses. But elsewhere Chapman says that Brady's participation was to stand guard on Main Street, well away from the battle lines, joining his neighbors in defending their buildings from any rioters. Some of the "numerous other things" that Chapman mentions were far more morally blameworthy -- his participation in the 1917 tarring and feathering of labor union activists, his membership in the Klan, his efforts to block the rebuilding of Greenwood after the riot -- but Chapman seemed to understand that saying that Brady "participated in the riot" communicated his unworthiness of honor in a way that needed no further explanation.)

UPDATE 2015/10/22:

Tributes to Lee Roy Chapman from friends, compiled by Josh Kline of The Tulsa Voice.

What follows is mainly from Lee Roy Chapman's LinkedIn profile. I thought that his list of accomplishments and the tributes from the people who worked with him needed a more permanent location. (You can read my tribute to Lee Roy Chapman here.) I will be adding to the list and adding links to articles and videos. Anything I've added is in italics.

Lee Roy Chapman is an independent scholar, journalist and historian specializing in the recovery of forgotten histories. In 2008, he established the Center for Public Secrets, a curated collection of artifacts that explores the sub-popular culture of Oklahoma. A longtime student of Oklahoma history with a special emphasis on race relations, art, and radical histories, Chapman has authored several articles that have received global attention. In 2011, he published "The Nightmare of Dreamland: Tate Brady and the Battle for Greenwood" in This Land magazine, which revealed that a founder of Tulsa was also an architect of the city's most violent hate crime--the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The article was lauded by historians such as Alfred Brophy and Scott Ellsworth, and has been cited by media companies ranging from National Public Radio to The Guardian.

Aside from his writings, Chapman has also produced and hosted several independent documentaries in which he discusses topics ranging from the Sex Pistols and the New York School of Poets to the art of Larry Clark as well as the hidden mass graves of African Americans in Tulsa. As a curator, Chapman has also located and acquired a number of important historical artifacts and artworks that now reside in university libraries and museums.

Chapman also frequently lectures in public and private forums, and has spoken to groups ranging from grade school students to university classrooms. His in-depth research into an eclectic range of subjects has earned him a reputation as an authority on Oklahoma culture and he regularly consults with foundations, companies, and private groups.

Creator
Center for Public Secrets
January 1999 - Present (16 years 10 months)TULSA

Curatorial:

• 2008 "Public Secrets ," Liggett Studios, Tulsa, OK


• 2009 "Gaylord Herron"​


• 2010 "The editors are not hipsters," Circle Cinema, Tulsa, OK. Warhol Screen Test


• 2011 "Larry Clark's Tulsa," Public Installation, Tulsa, OK.


• 2011 "Motorcyle Boy's Never Coming Back, " Bennie's Billiards [pop up] East End Gallery, Tulsa, OK. An autonomous installation featuring the work of S.E. Hinton, Francis Coppola and Gaylord Herron


• 2012 "Strangelove: An evening of Cold War Fear and Propaganda," [pop up], Church of the Christian Crusade, Tulsa, OK. Curated artifacts regarding radio pioneer Billy James Hargis Pop Up


• 2012 "Tulsa Time: The Graphic Legacy of Brian Thompson" Tulsa, OK. Presentation of iconic concert posters from an iconic artist.


• 2014 "This is not a Larry Clark Show," Arts and Humanities Center of Tulsa, OK. Video installation from James Payne and photography by Nick Haynes.


• 2014 "Locaciones: The influence of S.E. Hinton on South American culture," East Village Gallery, Tulsa, OK. Featuring photography from Western Doughty, Joe Cervantes and Gaylord Herron


• 2015 Let's Get Lost/Chet Baker Installation Yale, Oklahoma - Pending

Acquisitions:

2009 Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys 1948 Tour Bus
(private collector)

2010 Ted Berrigan's contributor's copy of the White Dove Review
McFarlin Library/University of Tulsa

2011 A collection of Tulsa School of Poets printed materials
University of Tulsa McFarlin Library's Special Collections

2012 The Leon Russell Archive/Steve Todoroff Collection
OKPOP/Oklahoma Historical Society

2014 Events of the Tulsa Disaster
David Ruebenstein Library/Duke University

2014 Archive of 124 Greenwood reconstruction photographs from 1922
McFarlin Library/University of Tulsa

2014 Alvin Krupnick 1921 Race Riot Relief 8x10 photo
McFarlin Library/University of Tulsa

2015 B.C. Franklin Race Riot typescript, photos, scrapbooks
Smithsonian/NMAAHC

2015 Events of the Tulsa Disaster by Mary Jones Parrish
Beinecke/Yale University

Contributing Editor
This Land Press
February 2011 - December 2014 (3 years 11 months)Tulsa, Oklahoma Area

Writer, producer and host of Public Secrets video and print series.

Articles:

• "The Nightmare of Dreamland: Tate Brady and the Battle for Greenwood," September 2011, This Land


• "The Drexel Building," January, 2011, This Land


• "Anarchy in the OK: The Sex Pistols in Tulsa," January 2012, This Land


• "Who's Afraid of Elohim City," April 2012, This Land (with Josh Kline)


• "Meet the Clarks," November 2012, This Land


• "The Strange Love of Dr. Billy James Hargis," November 2012, This Land


• "Subterranean Psychonaut: The Strange and Dreadful Saga of Gordon Todd Skinner," July 2013, This Land (with Michael Mason and Chris Sandel)

Video:

• "Public Secrets: The White Dove Review" 2011 This Land TV


• "Public Secrets: Larry Clark's Tulsa" 2011 This Land TV


• "Public Secrets: Pantoja's Driving Lesson" 2011 This Land TV


• "Larry Clark's Return to Tulsa," 2012, Field Guide Media


• "Public Secrets: Joe Brainard" 2012 This Land TV


• "Public Secrets: Calvary Cemetery" 2012 This Land TV*


• "Public Secrets: Woody Guthrie" 2012 This Land TV


• "Public Secrets: Tate Brady" 2012 This Land TV


• "Public Secrets: Mass Graves" 2012 This Land TV


• "Public Secrets: Sex Pistols" 2012 This Land TV


• "Public Secrets: Historic Greenwood 40 Blocks" 2013 BeInformedTV


• "Public Secrets: 1921 Tulsa Race Riots Reconnaissance Survey" 2013 BeInformedTV


• "Public Secrets: Guthrie Green Park" 2013 BeInformedTV


• "Public Secrets: Train Derailment" 2013 BeInformedTV


• "Public Secrets: Cement Plaques" 2013 BeInformedTV


• "Public Secrets: The Stem" 2013 BeInformedTV


• "Public Secrets: Standpipe Hill" 2013 BeInformedTV

Research and Discovery
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture
May 2010 - May 2013 (3 years 1 month) Tulsa

Locating and acquiring information and artifacts for the Smithsonian Institution's NMAAHC.

Second Unit Director
Cinepata
June 2012 - July 2012 (2 months)Tulsa

Second unit director for Alberto Fuguet's Locaciones

"Mr. Chapman is a mind and a human engine to reckon with. He is outstanding in his brilliance, full of humor and wit, determined to tackle history and see it with new eyes and force of human empathy and drive.

I was able to meet and work with Lee Roy in a documentary I made on the symbiosis between Tulsa and the Francis Ford Coppola movie Rumble Fish. Lee Roy, as a advocate for Tulsa´s history and a historian and editor of the outstanding journal This Land helped me immensely, opened his heart and contacts and ended up being my director of second unit once I was back in Chile and felt I needed extra footage.

Lee Roy has turned is unfathomable knowledge about Tulsa and Oklahoma in
general in a creative way. He´s more than a historian or an academic; he is a writer,
a chronicler, a raconteur, a filmmaker and an over-all achiever. I know that when my
film was selected at the Telluride Film Festival last year, and was presented by
Francis Coppola, that Lee Roy was the one who helped get there."
- Alberto Fuguet

Research Specialist
Raisin Cain LLC
2010 - 2012 (2 years)

Research and development
Exhibits
Panhandle Plains Historical Museum
2006 - 2007 (1 year)

Assisted in the creation and production of artifact displays.

Acquisitions and Sales
Oak Tree Books
1998 - 2004 (6 years)

Locating, grading, mending, protecting, pricing, cataloging and selling rare and out of print books. Specializing in Native American and Oklahoma histories.

Lead Printer
Wackyland/Artrock/Frank Kozik
1993 - 1994 (1 year)

Pre-press, production and post-production of fine art serigraphs and rock posters. Prints are now part of University of Texas, Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design, RocknRoll Hall of Fame and Cain's Ballroom.

Recommendations:

Cecil Cloud III
Photographer

Lee Roy Chapman: Dogged pursuer of truth, finder of artifacts, artist and independent filmmaker. A rare combination of knowledge, skill and determination,
always seeking a challenge. The man to turn to for obscure information and forgotten documents.

Dean Williams
Chairman, Williams & Williams

Lee Roy has an artist's perception regarding location - the space where people, land and buildings interact; and a curator's instinct for what's relevant thereto. His passion for truth discovery is a courageous guide to what matters, regardless of the "winners" to date and powers that be that otherwise, and too often impersonally, impose their stamp at whatever costs. Lee Roy is an Oklahoma treasure, in that by stewarding what's just he also quite personally insures all that is creative and possible as between people and this land.

Michael Mason
Editor, author, journalist

The combination of unparalleled knowledge of his subjects along with the ability to endow his work & research with broad vision makes Chapman a singular person in his field, and one of Oklahoma's best resources on matters relating to history and culture.

Paul Gardullo
Museum Curator at Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of African American History and Culture

I continue to benefit from Lee Roy Chapman's expertise about Tulsa's and Oklahoma's history. Lee Roy is an outstanding writer and researcher whose skills in digging up crucial archives, stories, contacts and collections have proven invaluable to my work at the Smithsonian.

Silvio Canihuante
Productor Audiovisual

Lee Roy and his partner Jeremy Lamberton did a wonderful job shooting for three nights in Tulsa, OK. They went to awesome places, looking for the original locations of Rumble Fish, which was shot at Tulsa. Lee Roy as the director of the 2nd unit of documentary "Locations: Looking for Rusty James"

MORE:

This Land Press has posted an item with links to many more of Lee Roy's articles and videos: "Lee Roy Chapman is still the king"

Lee Roy Chapman Flickr photostream: 511 photos from 2009 and 2010, including photos of the charred ruins of the Admiral Twin's original screens, images from the White Dove Review, an autographed copy of Stride Toward Freedom by Martin Luther King Jr. and a program from his appearance at the 1960 Tulsa Freedom Rally, portions of the Bible in Choctaw, a biography of Sequoyah, books about Indian land allotments, Bob Wills 1948 tour bus (including the title), and Chapman's own artwork in various media.