Customer Reviews

The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

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Up to this point, Tulsa native Scott Ellsworth's "Death In a Promised Land" has been the best book on the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, but Tim Madigan has done an excellent job with this story. Ellsworth's (who graciously gave Madigan assistance with this volume) book on this subject was written in a scholarly "matter of factly" tone, well-written and long on historical detail but somewhat short of passion for the subject. Madign gets deep into the emotions of the people behind the events and trasforms this detail into a story that the readers can identify with. The details and excellent use of primary sources makes it hard to beleive that it only took a year to write this book! Historians and casual readers will both find this book interesting (if extremely sad) reading. However, the ending does say much for the triumph of the human spirit and the book does give and interesting lesson to the depths and heights of human behavior.

You may still want to check out Ellworth's book for a primary introduction to the subject, as it goes a bit deeper into the background of Tulsa to understand the events. But overall, Madigan's work is as of now the best book on this subject.

Prosperous and comfortable life was destroyed one fateful summer day in 1921. The Tulsa burrough of Greenwood was once a place where African-Americans thrived. It was known as the "promised land" to blacks living in the Jim Crow South, and thousands of African-Americans migrated there, searching for a better life. There they erected beauty parlors, movie theaters, restaurants, dry cleaners, and numerous other businesses. These businesses were patronized by other Greenwood residents who worked for white Tulsans, but who were not allowed to buy goods and services at white-owned establishments.

This was all brought to a screeching halt when a young black man by the name of Dick Rowland had a misleading encounter with a white woman in an elevator. The charges were ridiculous and white officials knew it. However, the officials promised Rowland his day in court. But, a leading local newspaper used yellow journalism to sell papers that day. The headline read "TO LYNCH NEGRO TONIGHT."

Greenwood blacks had heard the horrific tales of lynchings and destruction across the country. The Greenwood residents proclaimed "Not here." So, when an angry white mob gathered at the courthouse where Rowland was being held, the Greenwood people became nervous. After assembling, they decided to drive across the tracks to the white section of Tulsa armed with their rifles to make sure the mob wasn't going to carry out the headline.

Feeling as if they were being threatened by the blacks, the whites armed themselves immediately after the car left. This was the turning point, for it was no longer about Dick Rowland. It was about the perception that the blacks thought they could come into town and threaten the whites. It was about the fact that many blacks in Greenwood lived better than their white counterparts. It was about greed, it was about jealousy, and it was about hate.

Fueled by this hate, over the next two days, white Tulsans murdered over 300 black Greenwood residents. They burned homes, businesses, schools, and churches. They shot any black person they saw in the white side of town, and stacked their bodies on flatbed trucks, to be hauled to unmarked graves in the countryside. The Greenwood townspeople did not give up without a fight, however. They defended their homes and community with fervor. But they were outnumbered and outgunned and soon, Greenwood was nothing but ash, a shadow of its former existence.

Tim Madigan writes a comprehensive account of the maelstrom that occured those days in Oklahoma. He uses personal interviews, historical documents, oral histories, and narration to bring The Burning together. The book reads like fiction, the interviewees and survivors have strong voices, and even those who witnessed the destruction, but have since passed, have their say against the tragedy that was The Burning. Everyone should know about what happened in Tulsa. It is as much part of our history as the Revolutionary War or the Watts Riots. Madigan provides an excellent vehicle for this discovery.

Reviewed by Candace K

Tim Madigan's lively, vivid and long over-due account of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 is a journalistic treasure. As one who originally hailed from Kansas and had been in and out of Tulsa twice a year since 1947, I was certainly familiar with the Oil Capitol; thus, Madigan's book spoke to me from the book rack. However, I found myself frustrated by the lack of a map of the Greenwood area. I actually had to buy a map of Tulsa and sit down with underlined passages in order to recreate exactly where Greenwood was. This is not the author's fault but it certainly is the fault of his editor at Thomas Dunne Books. (Too be honest, other books about the same subject also see maps as expendible). In any case you can smell the smoke in Madigan's account and you get a viseral reaction to the whole sad scene. The book is tangible proof that Ben Jonson was correct when he said that "Sunlight is the best solvent."

On June 1, 1921, the white citizenry of Tulsa leveled by fire one of the most successful black business and residential districts in the U. S. In the process of doing so, one to three hundred people, mostly black, were killed, and several thousand blacks, then possessing only the clothes on their backs, were forcibly marched to makeshift detention camps.

This book places the blame for the riot on rampant racism and a Tulsa newspaper publisher (Richard Lloyd Jones of the Tulsa Tribune), whose "to lynch Negro" editorial on May 31 remains missing to this day. The Negro in question was a black male who had been taken into custody for assaulting a white female. The assault charge was subsequently dropped.

One of the more memorable of many events in the book is the grisly murder of a blind elderly black man, who had only stumps for legs. He used old catcher mitts on his hands to propel himself from place to place on a wheeled platform and supported himself by selling pencils and singing songs on downtown Tulsa streets.

At around 8:00 A.M. on June 1, he was apprehended by a group of three or four whites, who tied one end of a rope to the longer of his two leg stumps and the other end to the rear bumper of their car. The old man's pleas for mercy followed by cries of pain as he bounced to and fro on the harsh bricks and steel rails of Main Street were to no avail.

Not one to be inconsistent, the Tulsa Tribune endorsed the riot--saying the blacks got what was coming to them ("the angry white man's reprisal for the wrong inflicted on them by the inferior race") and offering no apology to the police commissioner or mayor "for having pled with them to clean up the cesspools," otherwise referred to by the newspaper as "Niggertown."

The city fathers did little to help the blacks rebuild their homes and businesses and refused offers of help coming from outside Tulsa. Something like one-thousand blacks spent the winter of 1921-22 living in tents provided by the Red Cross. A number of blacks, not surprisingly, left Tulsa for good.

As mentioned by a previous reviewer, a map of (old) Tulsa would have been nice as an aid to the reader in tracing the mob's movement from one end of Greenwood (the black district) to the other.

In the author's note prior to the prologue, the author states he has "taken the license of approximating dialogue for the purpose of maintaining the narrative." Although this aspect is a bit of downer, a reader without access to official records would be hard-pressed to separate the envisioned dialogue from the actual. Regardless, the central message in this book is clear, consistent, and relevant.

I've noticed in my days as a journalist that the stories that people try hardest to hide are often those that most need to be told. This is definitely one of those stories. Madigan admits up front that he knew nothing of the the Tulsa riot when first assigned to write a story about it but he's apparently a quick learner. Starting with a newspaper feature article he went on to write this heartbreaking account of our nation's most deadly and least publicized riot. He acquits himself well, allowing the story to be told in the words of those who survived, and in some cases, participated.

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.

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!

From the 1880s, race relations in this country started deteriorating rapidly. Hangings, beatings, burnings took place all over the country. As rampant as such incidents were, who would have expected the same violence in Tulsa, Okla. in June 1921? It was a booming oil town, rising out of the prairie to great heights, both in money and buildings. On one side of the tracks lived the whites, many rolling in oil money. On the other side, called Greenwood, the black population, some of them rolling in money, too, earned by supplying services to those on the other side of town.

For years, a truce existed; some took for granted that it would always exist. Until the arrest of a young black man accused of assaulting a white woman in an elevator. By some, it was said to be an accident. By others, a deliberate attack. However, as events progress, the truth doesn't much matter. Emotions run too high: The blacks have no intention of letting the young man be lynched. The whites will not allow -- even fear -- interference from across the tracks. Hatred and fear drive people to action. When the dust and flames settled, nearly all of Greenwood was gone. Whites and blacks had been killed, how many, no one knows for sure. Many of the residents of Greenwood had left town for good.

This is a clear telling of events that began May 31, 1921, with the arrest of Dick Rowland for the assault on a white woman who may have been his girl friend. After all the years of keeping the story quiet, of lost accounts and memories, the number of dead can't be stated accurately. A newspaper front page, charged with helping to push Tulsans into violence, is gone. Many questions left unanswered.

The Burning is a quick read, but a story filled with horror. However, the kindness and courage of some of the residents are not left out. This, the most recent telling of the burning of Greenwood, reminds us of the dark side of our history and should help in keeping us from repeating history. It is a book for those unafraid to see the intricacies of our past, and for those who would hide from it.

The Burning is a treasure of history and investigative journalism. Minutely researched and eloquently and sensitively written, the book provides, in effect, a minute-by-minute account of the Tulsa pogrom of May 31 to June 1, 1921, as well as exegeses on the rise and grandeur of the Greenwood ghetto, and on the immediate aftermath of its devastation by hordes of white murderers and arsonists.

Nothing can bring the massacred and martyred back to life, or put someone of the present day literally in their shoes, or in those of the survivors of the immane horror of Tulsa's sacking. But Tim Madigan comes as close as humanly possible. His bibliographical essays (which he modestly terms "Chapter Notes"), are magnificent in themselves.

My only criticisms are that no photographs or maps are included in The Burning, that the epilogue could have given the reader a better understanding of how Greenwood recovered over the decades following its bloody ruination, and that more could have been said about the Red Cross workers who helped feed and shelter the bereaved and burned-out in their thousands. The Red Cross comes off looking great, but as we know from the story of the 1927 Mississippi River flood, that organization was hardly above enslaving and tormenting black disaster victims at the behest of or in league with the white power structure.

This was the best book I read in 2009. It was very detailed and to the point. The author did an excellent job finding people to interview who were a part of the Tulsa Race Riot and/or who had vivid details of the incident. It is a moving story you will never forget. Be patient while reading the first couple of chapters, for it is important to be able to identify with each character in order to understand their success, failures and their role in the story.