Stealing Tvlse Summer Tour | Fort Worth

A facility of secrets

It can be jarring in today’s digital age how written word still exists in only paper form. 

During the planning phase of our trip to the national archives in Fort Worth, VNN and LHRI prepared pages of document requests for the archivists to pull for our research. These requests were selected from collections of certain historical times and sources provided to us. 

Despite the prep work, the research results can be a roll of the dice. 

Will this set be what I’m looking for? Will these findings be typical or extraordinary? Compelling or mundane? 

While our trip to Kansas City yielded a good amount of relevant material, the amount of relevant material we found at Fort Worth was overwhelming. 

Read more about our research trip to Kansas City here.

Whispers of corruption are illuminated in outright accusations by and against named individuals. Hundreds of pages of witness testimony filled crumbling books, condemning wrongdoing by people still celebrated in Tulsa County today.

Each line is a thread, waiting patiently to unravel the fabricated positivity of Eastern Oklahoma history. 

But first, our journey to Philadelphia. In 1923, an Indian Rights Association investigation was underway, the results of which would bring Eastern Oklahoma’s probate crimes into the national spotlight. Exactly 100 years later, the Stealing Tvlse Summer Tour is traveling across the US to locate and analyze those original investigation documents, to assist us with bringing this important history to the nation’s attention once again. 

We look forward to sharing these findings and more with you soon.

Interested in supporting Stealing Tvlse? Click here. 

This investigation is supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. The Data-Driven Reporting Project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill.