Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation

ISBN-13: 9780195161038 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 208 str.

Alfred L. Brophy; Randall Kennedy

Opis

The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot was the country's bloodiest civil disturbance of the century. Thirty city blocks were burned to the ground, perhaps 150 died, and the prosperous black community of Greenwood, Oklahoma, was turned to rubble.
Brophy draws on his own extensive research into contemporary accounts and court documents to chronicle this devastating riot, showing how and why the rule of law quickly eroded. Brophy shines his lights on mob violence and racism run amok, both on the night of the riot and the following morning. Equally important, he shows how the city government and police not only permitted looting, shootings, and the burning of Greenwood, but actively participated in it by deputizing white citizens haphazardly, giving out guns and badges, or sending men to arm themselves. Likewise, the National Guard acted unconstitutionally, arresting every black resident they found, leaving property vulnerable to the white mob.
Brophy's stark narrative concludes with a discussion of reparations for victims of the riot through lawsuits and legislative action. That case has implications for other reparations movements, including reparations for slavery.
"Recovers a largely forgotten history of black activism in one of the grimmest periods of race relations.... Linking history with advocacy, Brophy also offers a reasoned defense of reparations for the riot's victims."--Washington Post Book World

Recenzje

"A timely contribution to a variety of important and contentious discussions involving American history, African American culture, and the problems encountered in attempting to right past wrongs.... Brophy reminds us that deadly, cruel, racial violence is not something that only happens 'out there' in the rest of the world but is something that has also happened here in the United States on a massive scale and that just as others out there have fallen short in reckoning with their pasts, so too have Americans."--Randall Kennedy, from the Preface

O autorze

Alfred L. Brophy is Professor of Law at the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. An authority on the 1921 riot, he contributed to the report to the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, a body created by the Oklahoma Legislature to investigate the riot and make recommendations for reparations.