The Ground Breaking

December 1, 2020

To write King Richard, a chronicle of the Watergate conspiracy, veteran Washington Post reporter Dobbs (One Minute to Midnight) drew on thousands of hours of newly released taped recordings. New York Times best-selling author of The Secret Game, Ellsworth heads back to his hometown in The Ground Breaking to report on the reopened investigation into the Tulsa Race Massacre and reckon with its consequences. Guinn's War on the Border recounts Pancho Villa's blood-soaked raid on a small U.S. border town and Gen. John J. Pershing's Punitive Expedition, a retaliatory gesture (75,000-copy first printing). From Schulman, Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the College of Staten Island and codirector of the ACT UP Oral History Project, Let the Record Show is a two-decades-in-the-making history of ACT UP's AIDSs advocacy. New York Times best-selling author White examines the 16th president's personal notes and jottings to show us Lincoln in Private.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 12, 2021
Historian Ellsworth (Death in a Promised Land) delivers a riveting investigation into the origins and aftermath of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. A native Tulsan, Ellsworth served on the 1997 commission that recommended reparations for the survivors of the massacre and their descendants. He recreates the attack on Greenwood, the city's thriving African American district, in meticulous and harrowing detail, describing how white rioters marched through the neighborhood shooting residents and looting stores while planes dropped incendiary bombs from overhead. Ellsworth also delves into modern-day efforts to locate the mass graves where victims are believed to have been buried; debunks rumors that the riot was planned (its spark, he contends, were accusations that a Black teenager had sexually assaulted a white girl); and notes the removal of photographs and newspaper articles from historical archives, and other efforts by Tulsa's white establishment to obscure the deaths of as many as 300 Black people and the displacement of 10,000 others. Interviews with survivors and reflections on the debate over reparations and the social, economic, and racial divisions of modern-day Tulsa add depth to Ellsworth's portrait of a community attempting to heal from an unimaginable injustice. This eloquent, deeply moving history isn't to be missed. Agent: David Larabell, CAA.

Starred review from May 1, 2021

In 1921, Greenwood, an affluent Black neighborhood in Tulsa, was destroyed by mobs of white Oklahomans. Ellsworth tells the story of the massacre and Tulsa's efforts to reckon with its history. While researching the massacre for his 1992 book (Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921), Ellsworth found that primary sources were hard to come by: official records had been purged, and survivors had been discouraged from speaking about their experiences. After the publication of Death in a Promised Land, Tulsa began a reckoning process that further exposed racial tensions in the city, particularly among residents who would have preferred to keep parts of Tulsa's history hidden. Ellsworth served on the city's reckoning commission, and in this book he details his and others' work to locate the graves of people who died in the massacre and engage the community to tell the massacre's painful stories. As the search for the dead extends to the present day, Ellsworth briefly reflects on current race relations in Tulsa. VERDICT A thoughtful exploration of the importance of collective memory. It is particularly poignant as 2021 marks the centennial of the massacre. A must-read for all who are interested in how history continues to impact the present.--Rebekah Kati, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2021
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.

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