The Burning
Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
"On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America's most prosperous. Thirty-four square blocks of Tulsa's Greenwood community, then known as the "Negro Wall Street of America," were reduced to smoldering rubble.".
"And now, eighty years later, the death toll of what is known as the Tulsa Race Riot is more difficult to pinpoint. Conservative estimates put the number of dead at about one hundred (75 percent of the victims are believed to have been black), but the actual number of casualties could be triple that.
The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what happened, has recommended that restitution to the historic Greenwood community would be good public policy and do much to repair the emotional as well as physical scars of this horrific incident in our shared past.".
"The Burning re-creates the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity; explores the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between Tulsa's black residents and the neighboring white population; recounts the events leading up to and including the holocaust at Greenwood. Finally, it documents the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy."--BOOK JACKET.
Reviews with the most likes.
I read this because both of my (older, white) parents read it and loved it and were so interested in this piece of history, and they wanted to talk to me about it. And I was like, oh yeah I watched HBO Watchmen, but, OK.
Anyway I think it is an interesting piece of history and where this book does its best is when it's talking about the climate leading up to the riot, as well as the lingering impact it's had on the survivors of that day. A lot of this history had been lost–literally burned. I was fascinated to read that the Oklahoma Historical Society offered a reward to anyone who could produce a copy of Richard Lloyd Jones' editorial that spurred on the riot. But apparently the text of that editorial is still lost to history.
Where this book faltered for me was its attempts to fill in lost history, with imagined dialogue from people who died or recreations of scenes that there obviously wasn't documentation for? Especially when he was recreating scenes from the POV of white folks who were using the n-word liberally. Like I mean, I'm sure they were, but then it was his choice to like...type the n-word into his book a bunch of times.
Still, clearly well-researched and did a great job of illuminating (so to speak) this moment in history. But you could probably just watch Watchmen instead tbh.
