Moving from New York City to Tulsa, Oklahoma, might seem an unlikely choice for a young African American scientist like Christopher Bland. His new home is known as an old oil boomtown—and as the site of a massacre of Black residents 100 years ago.
But life in his sixth-story West Harlem walkup was starting to wear on him, just as remote work in the pandemic freed him to live anywhere and still conduct his pediatric health environmental research for a Manhattan hospital. And Tulsa’s new artistic vibe reminded him of Athens, Georgia, where he studied at the University of Georgia.
