Walk through the Greenwood neighborhood, Goodwin says, and you can’t miss the metal plaques on sidewalks commemorating the hundreds of black-owned businesses set ablaze during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Next year for the centennial, Tulsa officials are planning a series of speeches, theatrical performances and a ribbon-cutting for the museum that Goodwin’s paper had expressed concern about.

E.L. Goodwin wanted to make sure that his paper would never let Tulsa forget this history.

In the early 1980s the paper moved into its current location in Greenwood and Goodwin juggled his responsibilities at the Eagle with his law practice.

Scott Ellsworth, a professor of African American history at the University of Michigan who has written extensively about the massacre, said the two white papers in town — the Tulsa World and the now-defunct Tulsa Tribune — mostly ignored it.