Witness and Repair: NOMMO’s Reflections on Greenwood and the Passing of Viola Fletcher
Photo: Gioncarlo Valentine for The Washington Post.
The passing of Viola Fletcher — the eldest known survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre — marks a profound moment in our collective memory. Ms. Fletcher carried nearly a century of witness, offering the world an unyielding account of both the devastation she lived through and the justice denied to generations of survivors and descendants. Her transition reminds us that the work of truth-telling and repair remains urgent.
During a recent research trip, NOMMO visited the historic Greenwood District and toured Greenwood Rising, the site committed to preserving and interpreting the legacy of Black Wall Street. Standing on the sacred ground where brilliance, entrepreneurship, and community once flourished — and where racial violence attempted to extinguish it — brought renewed clarity to the stakes of our work.
Learning this history again in place underscores what the exhibitions at Greenwood Rising powerfully assert: the demands issued by 1921 are still with us. Repair is not symbolic; it is material, continuous, and anchored in accountability. The charge carried by Greenwood’s descendants, scholars, and culture-bearers mirrors a lineage of stewardship that NOMMO proudly aligns with.
Like Ms. Fletcher, NOMMO is dedicated to making sure that the memories of those who perished, survived, resisted, and rebuilt are not pushed to the edges. Their stories teach vital lessons about democracy, freedom, and the ongoing fight for justice in the United States.
In continuing these histories, NOMMO emphasizes that memory is active, serving as a practice of restoring lost or hidden stories. Our approach involves revisiting archives, land, and community testimonies to uncover what has been purposefully concealed. Greenwood highlights that the stories we carry demand guardianship, and that the cultural effort of truth-telling is deeply linked to ongoing struggles for justice, healing, and clear understanding of history. Through research, interpretation, and storytelling, we aim to present a more complete and truthful account of the past as a step toward building a fairer future.
As we celebrate Ms. Fletcher’s life and legacy, we also recognize the responsibility she leaves for us all: to preserve memory, confront erasure, and envision Black futures deserving of the ancestors who shaped this nation.
Curating for Black Audiences: NOMMO’s Chief Curator Featured in Getty’s Balthazar Publication
There’s a special pride in walking into a library, heading to the art section, and seeing a book you authored on the shelf. For NOMMO’s chief curator, Tyree Boyd-Pates, that moment happened on the second floor of the Los Angeles Public Library when he picked up Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art (Getty Publications, 2023) to read his essay and contributions.
Featuring historians like Henry Louis Gates, Andrea Achi, Kristin Collins, and Bryan Keene, this book is more than just a publication; it is a tangible result of the museum’s consultation work for the 2019 Getty Museum exhibition of the same name. His contributions included fact-checking the historicity and contemporary cultural relevance, shaping the narrative, narrating the exhibition’s audio tour, and being featured in the museum's blog.
Featuring historians like Henry Louis Gates, Andrea Achi, Kristin Collins, and Bryan Keene, this book is more than just a publication; it is a tangible result of the museum’s consultation work for the 2019 Getty Museum exhibition of the same name. His contributions included fact-checking the historicity and contemporary cultural relevance, shaping the narrative, narrating the exhibition’s audio tour, and being featured in the museum's blog.
The Adoration of the Magi, from a book of hours (text in Latin), Provence, France, about 1480–90, Georges Trubert. The J. Paul Getty Museum
Holding this book in a local library represents more than authorship; it embodies the effort to provide accessible, accurate, and reframed historical narratives for the public, especially Black audiences.
Los Angeles Central Library, August 2025
In his essay in the book’s afterword, "Curating Black History with Black Audiences in Mind," our chief curator emphasizes the importance of centering Black viewers in museums and exhibitions. Too often, Black audiences encounter narratives that do not align with their understanding of their own political history and education, excluding them from their own historical narrative.
Exhibitions like Balthazar are essential in reclaiming space and elevating Black audiences from the margins to the center of their own narratives, affirming their role in global art history. Balthazar also ties into broader cultural moments, such as 2022’s Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s Renaissance album and world tour, which celebrate Black contributions during the same period. Similar to Beyoncé’s album and world tour, the exhibition, book, and essay above highlight the notable absence of Black figures during the medieval and Renaissance eras, repositioning and reclaiming them to be the heart of cultural rebirths and artistic renaissances periods.
Beyonce’s Renaissance Album Cover, 2022. For select vinyl releases, the artwork features Luca Giordano's 1690 painting La Conversion de Saint Paul behind Beyoncé atop a disco ball horse.
Making scholarship like this accessible in local libraries allows emerging art lovers, students, and historians to engage with the truth of Black presence in global history, a mission aligned with NOMMO’s core values: amplifying Black and African diasporic voices and ensuring they are seen, centered, and celebrated in cultural spaces. For our chief curator and NOMMO alike, seeing this book on the library shelf is more than recognition; it’s a reminder that representation in history and art is not just necessary, it’s transformative.
For a deeper understanding of Black Magi within the exhibit, read the exhibition checklist and accompanying text.