About this item
In the late spring of 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma, erupted into the worst single incident of racial violence in American history. Over the course of sixteen hours, mobs of white men and women looted and burned to the ground a prosperous African American community, known today as Black Wall Street. More than one thousand homes and businesses were destroyed, and scores, possibly hundreds, of people lost their lives. Then, for nearly a half century, the story of the massacre was actively suppressed. Official records disappeared, history textbooks ignored the tragedy, and citizens were warned to keep silent. Now nearly one hundred years after that horrible day, historian Scott Ellsworth returns to his hometown to tell the untold story of how America's foremost hidden racial tragedy was finally brought to light, and the unlikely cast of characters that made it happen.
About the Author
Scott Ellsworth is an American writer and the author of four books.DEATH IN A PROMISED LAND was the first comprehensive history of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. "This splendid book belongs in any library serving readers in American history," Library Journal."A historian with the soul of a poet" is how Booklist described the author of THE SECRET GAME. Winner of the 2016 PEN/ESPN Book Award for Literary Sportswriting, it is a riveting account of a clandestine, integrated college basketball game that took place in North Carolina in 1944--and of a nation on the verge of historic change.THE WORLD BENEATH THEIR FEET resurrects the Great Himalayan Race of the 1930s, when mountain climbers from Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and the United States vied to become the first to summit the great peaks of the Himalayas. 'It works brilliantly," The Sunday Times.In THE GROUND BREAKING, Scott returns to the Tulsa massacre and its legacy. "Taut, tense, and meticulously composed," Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. "Heartbreaking and inspiring," Beto O'Rourke.
