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  • The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History by Karlos K. Hill
  • Hollie A. Teague
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History. By Karlos K. Hill. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021. Pp. 290. Illustrations, bibliography.)

In May and June 2021, Texas governor Greg Abbott and Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt each signed a bill, part of a spate of similar legislation being passed around the country, attempting to control the ways racial issues are discussed in the classroom. Such bills were of particular concern due to their timing, centered around the one-hundredth anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. The history of the massacre, in which White people took the lives of approximately three hundred African American men, women, and children, has undergone extraordinary levels of overt erasure and as a result has been largely removed from Americans' collective historical memory. In The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History, Oklahoma professor, state senator, and activist Karlos K. Hill challenges that erasure by providing graphic evidence from the scene and in doing so adds meaningfully to the body of scholarship concerned with the horrific events of May 31 and June 1, 1921.

Continuing trends attempting to restrict an open and brave acknowledgement of historical traumas, which are becoming ever more entrenched in both Oklahoma and Texas, demonstrate why a book like Hill's is important. In the text, the voices and experiences of survivors are centered and honored rather than dismissed. In the photographs, a heartbreaking and enraging narrative unfolds that leaves little question [End Page 526] that the Black population of Tulsa has been doubly victimized, once by their violently aggressive neighbors set on maintaining White supremacy and again by the gatekeepers of history who have created a false narrative of America's racial past. Quoted in the book, massacre survivor Ruth Dean Nash said, "I was so traumatized by that riot, I don't remember much about anything, except for my terror. I'll never forget that" (224). Indeed, none of us should ever forget what was done in Tulsa in 1921 or what has been done since to cover it up.

Stories of what happened when the most economically successful Black community in the United States was destroyed by its White neighbors and a variety of law enforcement personnel may be difficult for many students to process. Viewing the horrific photographs, which make up the major focus of the book, may be exponentially more difficult. Only a teacher or professor sensitive to the realities of racial trauma should assign this book in its entirety, but no educator should ignore it.

This work is clearly an inspired and personal endeavor for Hill, who writes in the forward, "As a community and state leader—the only African-American male in the State Senate—I have made recognizing the significance of and honoring the lives, homes, and businesses lost in the most horrific massacre of Americans by Americans a major priority" (x). This book is an important addition to Hill's body of work and to the larger collection of scholarship on race relations in America.

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre would be a meaningful inclusion in any undergraduate- or graduate-level syllabus dedicated to American history, a history of the Southwest, race relations, and social memory. It will work best as a supplementary piece, either paired with a text that provides more narrative explanation or alongside a skillful professor's lectures. A reader unfamiliar with 1921 Tulsa will likely not come away from the book with a strong understanding of how events actually unfolded over those twenty-four terrible hours. That reader would, however, be unable to deny the horror of it. For those with some knowledge of the massacre, The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre is an invaluable contribution to expanding our understanding, knowledge, and compassion.

Hollie A. Teague
Dover-Foxcroft, Maine
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