The author reviews Scott Ellsworth's The Ground Breaking, a history of the 1921 Tulsa massacre and its aftermath, calling it the best history book he has read in a decade and urging it be required reading. He describes the massacre as a white mob atrocity against Black Tulsans that was then covered up, and praises historians for recovering it. He argues the story is central to telling the truth about America and calls for lament, restoration, reparations, and reconciliation.
Reviewed . Its Doxa Score waits for a researcher's decisions.
Its text teaches none of the positions Doxa lists.
Keyword counts
Woke keywords
Counted51.2 points from 15 keywords, 40 matches in 1,277 words
- america… 6
- white… 9
- black… 8
- justice 4
- race… 3
- white supremacy 1
Doxa counts words and phrases from a fixed list, each worth some points. It doesn't read context, so a word counts however it's used, and a keyword ending in … counts every word that starts with it.
- Endorses a source· Scott Ellsworth, The Ground Breaking
Ellsworth's The Ground Breaking is the best history book of the last decade, a brilliantly written, well-sleuthed account of the Tulsa massacre and the fight for justice afterward.
The story of the Tulsa massacre should be required reading for high school students or introductory college history classes.
- Endorses a source· Wright Thompson, The Barn
Wright Thompson's The Barn is a near-equal history that uncovers a cover-up of horrific white crimes against Black Americans.
The Tulsa massacre was deliberately covered up and erased from public memory, and some Tulsans still do not want the story told.
The Tulsa massacre was a horrific crime by whites against Black Americans, driven by racial tensions and mob violence, in which hundreds were killed and Black Wall Street was destroyed.
Attempts to erase history fail because historians, especially those attentive to oral history, will uncover it.
Survivors of the massacre faced reprisals from white supremacist powers in Tulsa, which functioned as principalities and powers.
Restoration and reparations for the Tulsa massacre are needed to establish a more equitable justice.
Tulsa's tragedy is part of a wider American story of race-based violence that belongs to all Americans, and without it one does not tell the truth about America.
Facing this history calls Americans to lament, to turn from what was done to what needs to be done, and so toward reconciliation.
Like the biblical rocks that cry out, the places of Tulsa will not rest until the victims' stories are told.
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