Charlie, I am perfectly willing to believe that Tom Hanks had not heard about the Tulsa massacre until reading an essay about it last year in the New York Times, but — doesn’t the guy from Bosom Buddies still watch television, from time to time?
Because the most-watched new television series of 2019, Watchmen, was in no small part about those events. An average of more than 7 million people watched each episode. It made a huge star out of Regina King (who is putting her success to good use).
It would be better if Americans learned more of their history from sources other than sci-fi series about giant space squids or whatever, to be sure. But I’ll bet there are more Americans under 35 who could tell you what happened at Tulsa than who could tell you what happened at, say, the Battle of New Orleans.
(My apologies to Charlie if that last item brings up a sore memory.)