I've just received the shocking news that Oklahoma historian Lee Roy Chapman has passed away at age 46. Lee Roy lived and worked in Tulsa and his writings often concerned difficult issues in the state's history. I knew him through his important and deep work on Tate Brady, one of Tulsa's founders and -- at least after Lee Roy's work appeared -- a controversial figure. Lee Roy's article, "The Nightmare of the Dreamland," explored Brady's role in the violence of the 1910s and 1920s Tulsa in which Brady had a hand.
I wrote about Lee Roy's work at the time:
Tate Brady, as Lee Roy Chapman points out, did a lot of good for Tulsa, but the positives came with lots of negatives. It is the tragedy of this story that building the city of Tulsa involved violence. In Brady’s case, it was violence against workers and African Americans. Therein lies a story we hear much about in American history at this time. ...
The final, haunting end of Brady’s life, after his son’s tragic death, invites questions about how the violence in early Tulsa injured those who were the perpetrators as well as the victims. Though we will never know, perhaps Brady’s suicide was partly a result of his conscience’s turmoil over the violence he had seen and committed.
This Land's Press, which published a lot of Lee Roy's work, has a memorial notice here, appropriately titled, "Lee Roy Chapman is still the King." And now that we have lost Lee Roy, a bunch of other people need to step up to try to fill the gaping hole left by his absence. There's a lot of work left to be done.
And there is a gofundme page for contributions to a fund to support his five year old son, Kasper.
Thanks for this, Al. All towns need journalist-historians like him.
Posted by: Mark Fenster | October 11, 2015 at 11:05 PM