Black men in Tulsa being marched under armed guard during the race massacre on June 1, 1921. (Department of Special Collections/McFarlin Library/University of Tulsa/AP).

I first learned of my cousin’s lynching when I was 10 years old.

My family never talked about his murder in my presence, and, to this day, I have not heard them discuss it since. It is almost as if it never happened. I wonder if our failure to discuss this is a coping mechanism; or, perhaps, an attempt to push the event into the back of our minds. We know there will never be anything resembling justice in the case; maybe it is easier to pretend like it never happened.  I only found out because my great-grandmother, a wizened old black woman whose face spoke of years of enduring the weight of patriarchy and white supremacy, accidently told me the story in the summer of 1992.