An essential historical record surrounding heinous events that have yet to be answered with racial justice.
A vital history of a racially motivated mass murder a century ago.
It has been nearly 20 years since James Hirsch’s Riot and Remembrance offered a modern record of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. “In an interview with a journalist some twenty years ago, I…likened it to an American Kristallnacht,” writes Ellsworth, a professor of Afro-American and African studies. “That wasn’t a stretch.” The author delivers a brilliant update that recounts the events with the swiftness of an especially grim crime thriller. The massacre was touched off by an alleged assault committed by a Black teenager against a White girl. The young man was threatened with lynching as a mob of angry Whites assembled at the city jail. When Black veterans of World War I arrived to protect him, shooting began, with police officers “doling out rifles, pistols, shotguns, and boxes of ammunition to members of the lynch mob.” They went on to firebomb the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood (“Black Wall Street”), displacing thousands of residents. Ultimately, an unknown number of Black Tulsans were murdered—unknown because Tulsa took pains to cover up the massive crime, burying the victims in unrecorded mass graves—and their businesses were ruined. Evidence existed, including a trove of police photographs. “Whole sections of the city look like Berlin or Frankfurt at the end of World War II,” writes Ellsworth. “In one snapshot, the lifeless bodies of an entire African American family—father, mother, son, and daughter—have all been draped over a fence, their arms hanging down toward the ground.” Ellsworth not only recounts the horrific crimes; he also traces the chain of journalists and researchers who preceded him in revealing the details. The author doubts that the exact number of casualties will ever be known, but through his diligent research, the locations of many graves have been discovered and forensic work conducted, assisted by locals who spoke out with information passed down over generations.
An essential historical record surrounding heinous events that have yet to be answered with racial justice.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18298-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.
The Harvard historian and Texas native demonstrates what the holiday means to her and to the rest of the nation.
Initially celebrated primarily by Black Texans, Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, when a Union general arrived in Galveston to proclaim the end of slavery with the defeat of the Confederacy. If only history were that simple. In her latest, Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and numerous other honors, describes how Whites raged and committed violence against celebratory Blacks as racism in Texas and across the country continued to spread through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and separate-but-equal rationalizations. As Gordon-Reed amply shows in this smooth combination of memoir, essay, and history, such racism is by no means a thing of the past, even as Juneteenth has come to be celebrated by all of Texas and throughout the U.S. The Galveston announcement, notes the author, came well after the Emancipation Proclamation but before the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Though Gordon-Reed writes fondly of her native state, especially the strong familial ties and sense of community, she acknowledges her challenges as a woman of color in a state where “the image of Texas has a gender and a race: “Texas is a White man.” The author astutely explores “what that means for everyone who lives in Texas and is not a White man.” With all of its diversity and geographic expanse, Texas also has a singular history—as part of Mexico, as its own republic from 1836 to 1846, and as a place that “has connections to people of African descent that go back centuries.” All of this provides context for the uniqueness of this historical moment, which Gordon-Reed explores with her characteristic rigor and insight.
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-883-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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