Column: 47 Days In Tulsa, The Summer That Spoke

Jun 1, 2025. At 4 a.m., I was ready to start a new journey. Oklahoma awaits me on flight 2782, boarding time 8:20 a.m., from Dallas Love Field to Tulsa, Oklahoma. On the drive to the airport, the sun was starting to peek through the clouds, and my mom started to debrief me before the journey. “You know I’m proud of you, right?” she says. “I know,” I reply.

We arrive at the departure terminal. As each bag is placed, my mind starts to race, and my heart starts to beat irregularly. I am nervous. Normally, I do not say goodbye to my mom. It is always a ‘see you later’, followed by a hug. As we said our farewells with a tear streaming down my face, I contemplated the journey ahead.

A summer away from home? 47 days in a state I hardly know? “Lord, I don’t know what you have in store, but keep her as she starts this internship,” my mom prays. Walking to my gate, I was battling my inner thoughts. “Can I just go home now? “What will happen if I turn back? “Maybe I do not need this internship right now.”

I was not home with my family for that long. I was running away from a breakup, and here I am sitting at an airport with nothing but my bags and $300 in my pocket, all for an opportunity of a lifetime. I took a leap of faith.

I have never been in Oklahoma by myself, let alone in Tulsa. You would think that going to school at Langston University for the past few years would make the transition of being away from home a lot easier, but it was the complete opposite. It was circumstances that left me feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I experienced a lot through my previous school year, where many occasions left me crying and feeling hopeless in my dorm room. I wanted the summer to give me back a breath and let me exhale from the struggles. 

7:15 a.m. I took a seat closest to the flight attendant’s desk to watch the planes fly in and take off into the sky. This one lady, I can’t remember her name, but I remember she was an older lady with gray hair. She wore a pink shirt with orangey green flower print pants. She was sitting in a wheelchair, and she was having trouble charging her phone, so I helped. She was a Tulsa Native going back home to visit, and she asked me what I was flying to her home city for.

“I’m here for an internship with FBO (Focus Black Oklahoma),” I said, and she nodded for me to continue, “we focus on the voices of marginalized communities, especially those of our kinfolk, and the show airs on NPR and KOSU Radio.”

8:00 a.m. hits, and we are boarding the plane; she boards first, then I. 9:58 a.m., “Greetings passengers, we have now landed in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” the captain said. Stepping off the plane, a big and colorful Oklahoma sign was awaiting me. The Tulsa airport was small, and the people were few, yet the nervousness I felt was overwhelming.  

12:15 p.m., I arrived at the University of Tulsa by way of my older sister Devyn. She has been in my life since my freshman year of college, and knowing I had someone nearby and in my corner made my summer life a tad bit easier. We arrived at Hardesty Hall, the main dormitory for summer interns. Even staying in Hardesty was a blessing; usually, there is an intern deposit of $200 that has to be paid, but my stay was completely covered through Campus Tulsa, a program for which I was an ambassador for the past school year.

June 3rd at 5:45 p.m. I made my way to the fellowship arts district in downtown Tulsa, where the studio was located, to meet the executive producer of Focus Black Oklahoma, Bracken Klar, to discuss the things that I would be doing in my internship. When I first interviewed with Bracken, I was excited; the activist in me flared. To be young, black, and a voice to those who feel like they have none drove my passion for journalism even more.

The studio was cold, brick-insulated, with a table and four mic stands. Small, but quaint. When I first got introduced to Focus Black Oklahoma, I was recommended by Evan Burton, the ambassador and internship coordinator for Campus Tulsa. He saw the work that I was doing on Langston’s campus when I hosted student engagement events in the cafe and created content for them. I was able to bridge the gap between the students of Langston and Campus Tulsa so that others like me had a chance to experience paid opportunities before leaving for college. 

Evan connected Bracken and me; we emailed, interviewed, and stayed connected before I left for Tulsa. FBO hosts a show once a month, and it gets aired three times within that month, so the only time I was in the studio was for production week. They get a lot of their stories from correspondents, those who seek out news stories around the state of Oklahoma. During my first production week, Zoom meetings were hosted, chats were blasting, stories were being sorted, and my eyes were watching everything.

I learned how to use different editing platforms, as well as refreshed my skills working with studio equipment. I picked up fast on the teachings and was able to “edit with the big dogs” on my first production night. For three hours straight on a Tuesday night, sound waves, scripts, and clicks in rotation pieced together the correspondence story to air. Once the night was complete, I headed back to the University of Tulsa to lay my head. Production week was over, and for the rest of the month, I sat in a dorm room.

I started to settle down in the fact that I did have an internship, and it was great, but it wasn’t until I was talking with my other sisters, Sharodon and Alia, that it really solidified the fact that I was about to go into survival mode. $300 came and went, I had to get the essentials, it tied me over for the month, and I had Devyn to provide me transportation, but what was I going to do until I go back to Langston? 47 days kept ringing in my head. I’ve never had to wonder about how I was going to survive for.

I was used to a constant flow. I’ve been working since I was 16, and my past internships were paid, and I knew what to expect. With this one, I faced the unknown. I was broke, stretched thin, sitting in my own thoughts, and yet still pushing to get through the summer. I humbled myself into thinking, “Maybe I’ll wait to ask about payment? … I just got here, I need to prove my worth beforehand.” Sharodon and Alia shut down my humbleness. They essentially told me to be real with myself and focus on the value the summer was supposed to uphold, the value of my craft, and seek out answers to adapt and find out the minute details.

They mentored me every step to get me to Tulsa in the first place; they knew the emotional baggage that I was carrying, so they pushed for me to advocate for myself. Sharodon had previously worked with Campus Tulsa as well as FBO through the George Keizer Foundation, so her experience was definitely different from mine, but our network was surely connected. She encouraged me to reach out to both Bracken and Evan for support.

When I finally found the courage to reach out about my situation, it was hard, but I knew it was something I had to do to lift the burden off my shoulders. From Bracken, I was told, “If you complete a story, we pay you!” At first, I didn’t know how to respond to that message, so I reached out to Evan with only three weeks left of my internship. He was apologetic about the miscommunication, and together we set up a game plan of how I was going to finish out the rest of my stay in Tulsa, this time with proper compensation. In addition to still working with FBO, I spent my time creating content and promotion for Campus Tulsa. 

For July’s episode of FBO, I wrote a story about the current Americorps/Job Corps crisis and how a program that provided many American adolescents who come from low-income backgrounds and hardships with an opportunity to help change their life narratives was being shut down due to national budget cuts. One of the first facilities to close was Guthrie. After the sudden shutdown of the Guthrie, Oklahoma, facility, many were facing the unknown.

When doing research, I hoped to find the silver lining. I wanted my story to highlight what it meant to be young and striving for a better future. Amid interviews, I had to put myself into the shoes of my peers. Ask questions that were uncomfortable to ask and discover the true impact of building from nothing. I became the voice for growing minds just like mine and for those who consistently faced what I went through in just the summer. 

That summer in Tulsa was never about an internship; it was about endurance, faith, and the power of voice. I was unsure of what the next 47 days would hold, but I left with something far greater: clarity in my purpose and confidence in my craft. I learned that survival could spark resilience, and resilience can transform into impact. The stories I tell are not just for me, but for every young person who has ever wondered if they were enough.

“Take the leap, even when fear tells you not to— the moment you step out in faith, you step into your purpose.” -(unknown)