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The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice
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About This Book
And then they were gone. More than one thousand homes and businesses. Restaurants and movie theaters, churches and doctors' offices, a hospital, a public library, a post office. Looted, burned, and bombed from the air. Over the course of less than twenty-four hours in the spring of 1921, Tulsa's infamous "Black Wall Street" was wiped off the map--and erased from the history books. Official records were disappeared, researchers were threatened, and the worst single incident of racial violence in American history was kept hidden for more than fifty years. But there were some secrets that would not die. A riveting and essential new book, The Ground Breaking not only tells the long-suppressed story of the notorious Tulsa Race Massacre. It also unearths the lost history of how the massacre was covered up, and of the courageous individuals who fought to keep the story alive. Most importantly, it recounts the ongoing archaeological saga and the search for the unmarked graves of the victims of the massacre, and of the fight to win restitution for the survivors and their families. Both a forgotten chronicle from the nation's past, and a story ripped from today's headlines, The Ground Breaking is a page-turning reflection on how we, as Americans, must wrestle with the parts of our history that have been buried for far too long.
Reviews
"This eloquent, deeply moving history isn't to be missed."
"filled with moments like these — candid and self-aware, undergirded by Ellsworth's earnest efforts to get at this history, and to get it right ..."
"The bulk of the book discusses the aftermath and the unearthing of long-buried facts, including the search for rumored mass graves of African American citizens of Tulsa."
"It is particularly poignant as 2021 marks the centennial of the massacre."
"Fast-paced but nuanced, it's an impeccably researched update of Ellsworth's literary debut."
"But the story he tells is an essential one, with just a glimmer of hope in it."
"An essential historical record surrounding heinous events that have yet to be answered with racial justice."
"The utopia-like feeling that emerges in the early chapters, however, slips away as Ellsworth recounts, with great care and sensitivity, the barrage of attacks on the Black community."
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