For a century, it was called the “Tulsa race riot.” As more and more people looked at what happened in Oklahoma on June 1, 1921, it came to be the “Tulsa race massacre.”

Is the change in the name just more political correctness? Or is this a good example of how language can be used to obscure as much as it can be used to illuminate? Or is it simply the proper reflection of what really happened? Which term more properly describes the attack on the Greenwood neighborhood by armed whites, the destruction of houses and businesses and the killing of between a few dozen and 300 Black people?

I was married for nearly 52 years to an Oklahoman. She even studied for a year at the University of Tulsa. My late sister played for two years in the Tulsa Philharmonic.

From neither did I ever hear a word about what happened in 1921 in Tulsa. My late wife had to take Oklahoma history in high school, which meant learning the names of all 77 Oklahoma counties. I’ll bet she still knew those names when she died four years and two days ago. But she may never have been taught the truth about the Tulsa massacre.

Language does and should change. For example, I learned the word “lawyer” as a noun. Now it’s also a verb. On the “FBI” show, actor Missy Peregrym said, “He lawyered up,” meaning a suspect had hired a lawyer. Using “lawyer” as a verb meets the test any new usage should meet. It does something no other word does and it is easily understood.

Language Luddites might still object. Does their reluctance have to do with who is doing the changing? Many conservatives feel the shifts in language are forced on them by liberals, frequently on college campuses. They might not be wrong.

Let’s look at some changes to try to figure when language should and shouldn’t change.

The first is easy. Fifty-five years ago, our stylebook at The Kansas City Star told us how to distinguish between girls and women, boys and men. On the 18th birthday, the stylebook dictated, every girl becomes a woman, every boy a man.

The next wasn’t so easy. In the 1960s and ’70s, we saw a shift in how to designate folks of African descent. The simple answer is “as they want to be designated.” But that isn’t easy. In the old South, the designation “black” was pejorative, as in “black buck.” The word “colored” was more common, as in “colored waiting room.”

You didn’t have to listen to many Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speeches to notice that he usually said “Negro.” So we said “Negro.” Then we began hearing “black,” puzzling white folks who had thought it pejorative. Then we began hearing “African-American” used as we use “Italian-American” or “Irish-American.”

Something similar happened with how the white majority designates the people whose ancestors were here when our ancestors came. We were raised on cowboys and Indians.  But Indians slid into “native Americans.” Some, myself included, object. I am a native American, born in Wisconsin. Native means “born in,” not “here first” or “lives in.”

For a better idea, look north. Canada’s constitution, adopted in 1982, uses “First Nations” for the tribes and “indigenous” for individual people. “First Nations” and “indigenous” are more accurate than “Native Canadian” or “Native American.”

Sometimes, political correctors want to overcome the fact that perfectly good words come to have perfectly bad connotations. “Crippled” and “retarded” were not pejorative when I was growing up. Now they are. “Crippled” moved torturously to “handicapped” to “disabled” to “differently abled” to “physically challenged.” “Retarded” morphed into “intellectually disabled,” then into “developmentally challenged.”

While “physically challenged” and “developmentally challenged” do nothing that “crippled” and “retarded” don’t do, they were used often pejoratively. So, tricky as it can be to remember the new terms, we adopt them, at least for a while, to avoid offending. Perhaps in time, “crippled” and “retarded” will shed the negative connotation and pass back into our common language just as “black” did.

From the subtle to the ridiculous. In Seattle, a third-grader named Jessica wanted to give her classmates candy-filled plastic eggs. The teacher said OK, so long as she called them “spring spheres.” When Jessica brought in the gifts, the teacher said, “Oh, look, spring spheres.” The kids jumped up and down, clapping and squealing, “Oh, look, Easter eggs.”

Some college administrators have told fraternities and sororities to change “pledge” to “associate member,” “pledging” to “new member education,” “rush” to “new member recruitment process.” Do any of those achieve anything the old terms did not achieve? Do any of them replace a term that was pejorative and therefore offensive?

Words need constantly to be examined — the unexamined word is not worth speaking, to steal an idea from Socrates — but maybe not by college administrators with too much free time. I used to tell students that journalism determines language usage because it is the most-read writing in the country. Maybe we should take that job back from college deans.

Bob Neal looks askance at a lot of political correctness. But he recognizes that political  correctness isn’t the only reason that language changes. Neal can be reached at [email protected].