Ethan Hawke’s “Lowdown”: The Real Activist Behind the Character

In the piece, Chapman revealed that Brady had deep connections to some of Tulsa and America’s most sordid chapters. He reported that Brady, along with Tulsa’s then-chief of police, had secretly spearheaded the Tulsa Outrage, leading their vigilante group Knights of Liberty in kidnapping and torturing seventeen union organizers on November 9, 1917. This event led the Tulsa Daily World to recognize the birth of the “Modern Ku Klux Klan” in a headline published the following day.

He also exposed Brady’s connections to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921which was a two-day white supremacist terror attack on Tulsa’s Greenwood District, which was one of America’s wealthiest Black communities at the time. The attack led to between fifty and 300 deaths and thousands of hospitalizations, as well as the destruction of more than a thousand businesses and homes.

Chapman’s research revealed that Brady had volunteered to be a night guard on the night of the attack, and also showed that Brady later was appointed to the Tulsa Real Estate Exchange Commission, which relocated Black residents from the area. Chapman also revealed that Brady had profited significantly from the acquisition of property damaged after the attack.