KEYES

LESLEE STRADFORD

Dr. Leslee Howes Stradford is a descendant of John Batiste (J.B.) Stradford, who was an attorney, entrepreneur and the owner of the prestigious Stradford Hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
A prominent community member, he managed to escape in the aftermath of the 1921 Black Wall Street Massacre but those terrible events marked him and his family. Using a collection of family documents and photographs, Stradford has created a series of works on silk that depict the sophisticated and prosperous lives of the African-Americans in Tulsa before the riots and the destruction that followed.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT
’My approach to making art includes: social, cultural and historical documentation. It is sometimes figurative, sometimes abstract, sometimes both. Using new technology, photographic research, and drawing, I create digital images, painted canvases and printed silks

Dr. Leslee Howes Stradford is an artist, entrepreneur, educator, historian and private pilot. She was born in Chicago and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a doctorate in art education and educational administration from Illinois State University.

She has taught at the American Language Center in Casablanca, Morocco, and lectured internationally. She was a residence artist at the Studio Arts Center International in Florence, Italy, and at the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, China.

As an artist, her practice included social, cultural and historical documentation. It straddles figuration and abstraction. Using new technology, photographic research and drawing, she creates digital images, painted canvases and printed silks. Her series “The Night Tulsa Died” depict the 1921 The Black Wall Street Massacre during which the African American inhabitants of the racially segregated Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were killed and brutalized. Stradford is a descendant of survivors of that tragic event.

”You want to tell a story in images that people will understand if there are no words,” she said. “Being a visual artist and having taught for the better part of 50 years, I thought that would be a challenge that I needed to do.” She added that committing to the project wasn’t so much a deliberate decision, but, rather, “it sort of chose me.”

“The Night Tulsa Died”: The Black Wall Street Massacre 1921 is a series of images which tells a story of an event in U.S. history that pitted white Americans against black Americans.  “The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921” was a massacre confined mainly to the racially segregated Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa Oklahoma, on May 31 to June 1, 1921.  Stradford is a descendant of victims in that riot.

“In the midst of this flourishing community, a teenage black shoe shiner startled a 17-year-old white elevator operator. She claimed he tried to attack her and the shoe shiner was arrested. Rumors swirled of a possible lynching, with the Ku Klux Klan soliciting the sheriff for permission to do just that. Seventy-five members of the Black community went to the courthouse to protect the boy from lynching. A member of the group was confronted by a white man…”