Wyatt Tate Brady
Wyatt Brady was a Missouri shoe salesman who relocated to the so-called Indian Territory after surviving a robbery attempt. The Indian Territory was the land occupied by the Creek sect of the Cherokee tribes who had resided there since the Trail of Tears during the Jackson Administration. While there, Brady married a Creek woman, becoming as a result an adopted tribal member, and a fighter for Creek rights against the Federal government in Washington DC.
He became one of the founders of the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and owned and operated the Brady Hotel, and was a popular employer with the reputation of hiring and promoting black, Native American, and white workers without evident prejudice.
When oil workers who were not becoming rich attempted to organize in 1917, a vigilante group calling themselves the Knights of Liberty (a local group connected to the KKK) attacked and tarred and feathered many of their leaders. Brady was identified as both the leader of the Knights of Liberty and the primary applier of tar. When the Klan decided that it was time to construct a meeting hall – called a Klavern – in Tulsa they created the Tulsa Benevolent Society and provided it with $200,000 to purchase land suitable for their use. The land was purchased from a parcel owned by Rachel Brady – Wyatt’s wife – and near by the Brady Hotel.
Brady freely admitted his Klan membership though he claimed to have resigned from the Klan when registering as a member of the Democratic Party. Several areas of Tulsa remain named for him, although Tulsa’s Brady Street no longer honors the town founder. Originally named for Brady, in 2013 it was re-dedicated to honor Civil War photographer Matthew Brady – who has no other connection with Tulsa or Oklahoma. The renaming was instigated by groups opposing Wyatt Brady’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan.