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Title: The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 by Tim Madigan ISBN: 0-312-30247-9 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.29 (14 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Balancing History & Narrative
Comment: In 1921, one of the most successful black communities in the U.S. was completely destroyed by white mobs. The triggering event was a bogus accusation of assault by a white girl of questionable character against a young black man named Dick Rowland. Hundreds were killed and the landscape of Tulsa remade forever in an event that made headlines across the country, then disappeared from American consciousness until very recently. In 'The Burning,' Texas newspaper reporter Tim Madigan explores the worst race riot in America's history with both a reporter's love of detail and a writer's love of legitimate human drama.
'The Burning' almost can't help but be gripping--the subject matter is naturally captivating, and Madigan does an excellent job of placing you THERE time and time again through the eyes of various participants, both black and white. It's a very complete account, and Madigan finds a nice balance between being well-researched and all historical-ish and filling in color or details in his narrative to keep the story alive. While there are a few heroes and villains, Madigan avoids painting his characters in bold 'good guy' / 'bad guy' stereotypes. The reader is left not simply reviling white supremacists and feeling morally superior to past generations, but questioning the dark side of our humanity and hating ignorance and self-righteousness, whatever their specifics.
The book begins a little off-kilter as he sets up various approaches and backgrounds to the events to come, and I wonder if he didn't write various sections here and later in the work at different times, then simply paste them together without necessarily working them into a single consistent flow. It is at times briefly disorienting. And while the compilation of SO many first-hand experiences by different people is wonderful in terms of completeness, it occasionally feels like overkill. If this were a work of fiction, such thoroughness would be wallowing. Being as it's history, and a piece of history not yet often written about in detail, this is easily forgiven. As commented on by previous reviewers, the informal way Madigan cites sources at the end of the book is troubling, but hardly qualifies of evidence of his placing emotion over substance.
Overall, a must-read for anyone interested in Oklahoma (both of you), race relations or civil rights, sociology, or American history. While the nature of the event leaves some of Madigan's details open to future challenge, his painting of this horrific episode will not easily be forgotten.
Rating: 5
Summary: Timely piece of American history
Comment: The Burning provides great insight into the dynamics of race relations as they existed in Tulsa Oklahoma circa 1920's. Madigan does an excellent job of laying the social, psychological and historical groundwork necessary for understanding the flourishing and prosperous black community of Greenwood within Tulsa. His extensive research chronicles factors within the white community of Tulsa, bringing into play a diverse mixture of key characters with their own social and racial agendas. As readers following the unfolding string of events, we find ourselves witnesses to one of the most atrocious, heartbreading and bloody crimes committed against any one group of individuals on American soil.
Madigan draws directly from his own personal interviews with surviving eyewitnesses. Lucid, firsthand accounts provide vivid details of the carnage, slaughter and Pandemonium occuring on the streets of Greenwood on that fateful day in May, 1921. Madigan also uses a wealth of historical documents to provide for a salient, conscientious and unbiased account of what transpired as can be hoped for.
The Burning gives us a rare opportunity to learn about one of the most reprehensible acts of terror carried out against one group of American citizens by another. In conjuction with this event, the fact that such a significant historical calamity could have gone underground and been safeguarded there for this many years is practically beyond belief. I have heard we are only as sick as the secrets we keep. Maybe in this time of global turmoil and fear, where mass hysteria and mob mentality simmer just beneath the surface, we might do better to take a closer look at ourself.
Kudo's Madigan, what a worthwhile undertaking!
Rating: 4
Summary: EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG?
Comment: a CLIFFORD HODGE review
Do you remember that Firesign Theatre album: "Everything You Know is Wrong"? Once in awhile you read a book about an event in history that makes you wonder how you failed to hear about it earlier. "Why didn't anyone ever tell me about this?" you ask yourself, trying to pull something from the recesses of your memory to bridge the gap and harmonize the cognitive dissonance you feel, having learned that the world is a stranger place than you had suspected.
In the '60's we associated "race riot" with violence and unrest in the black community, images of blacks breaking windows, setting fires, throwing rocks, etc. Well, yes, Virginia, it's true, there was a time when "race riot" not only did not refer to violent behavior by blacks, but it referred to a series of events which involved, as The Clash might say: "White Riot", the white majority running amok, burning down houses, looting, killing innocent blacks, and, what seems most significant, destroying signs of black economic achievement (spell that i-n-d-e-p-e-n-d-e-n-c-e ) and social advancement.
A stack of books which have come out in the last 3 or 4 years can help you patch the holes in your education, books dealing with early 20th-century riots in places like Tulsa, Florida, and New Orleans. What is perhaps most disturbing about the revelations in these books is the fact that the violence is carried out not only in full view of the local autorities, but with the cooperation and assistance of local and even national government. Talk about being up against it! Why are these important? Isn't this just mean-spirited muckraking? No. They raise questions relevant to a current legal issue, namely the payment of reparations to blacks. The first-hand accounts provided by Madigan vividly establish the severity and duration of the damages suffered by the victims - only a handful of whom survived at the time of publication - at the hands of the whites - whose surviving numbers are never known, since the participants have tended not to reveal themselves for obvious reasons. It raises questions about whether, for insurance purposes, the events should have been defined, not as a riot, but as a government action or an act of war, an invasion by a hostile army. Indeed, Greenwood resembled a war zone in some respects; read the book if you don't believe me.
Accounts differ between this and other books regarding how the events in front of the courthouse that evening of May 31, 1921 evolved into the conflagration that turned several city blocks of houses into smoking empty lots. The apparent turning point was a confrontation between a black WWI veteran who owned a grocery and an elderly white man who apparently was not too clear-headed, and acted as though he was living in pre-war (Civil, that is) days. Within a matter of seconds, scores of shots were fired, everyone hit the ground, then ran to his own side of town to re-arm, re-load, and reconnoiter.
Those couple seconds after the flurry of shots, when it became silent again, and everyone looked around at the dead and wounded, suddenly realizing that something big had happened, something bigger might (or might not?) happen, constitute one of the most dramatic event descriptions I've ever read in a history book. It calls to mind Ken Burns talking about making a recording of Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, and telling about editing the sound, coming to the very moment before Lincoln is shot, and stopping the tape. Everyone in the editing room sat looking at each other, thinking about the tremendous import of that brief moment, that pause as time gets ready to draw another breath, when things could go one way or the other, and that makes all the difference.
I can imagine being on that courthouse square with the 500 or so people just at that moment when the shooting stops, smoke hovering all around, and they all look at each other, frightened, suspicious: "Can we just walk away?" Each wonders what will happen next... And being human, they dread. Everyone runs for a gun, a knife, a club. They all pile into cars and head off to organize an army. The two sides have now engaged, battle lines been drawn, and all without anyone saying anything. That's history. What will you do if you're there next time? That's why we read history.
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Title: Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy by James S. Hirsch ISBN: 0618108130 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Pub. Date: 22 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 by Scott Ellsworth ISBN: 0807117676 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1992 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 by Alfred L. Brophy, Randall Kennedy ISBN: 0195146859 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: 100 Years of Lynchings by Ralph Ginzburg ISBN: 0933121180 Publisher: Black Classic Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America by James Allen, Hilton Als, Jon Lewis, Leon F. Litwack, Leon Litwack, John Lewis, Hilton Als ISBN: 0944092691 Publisher: Twin Palms Publishers Pub. Date: 01 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $60.00 |
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