A Black History on the Conflict, Hope, and Fallout of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
June 1, 2022
Author of the acclaimed Let It Bang: A Young Black Man's Reluctant Odyssey into Guns, the Tulsa-raised Young digs deep into events surrounding the city's horrific 1921 massacre of Black residents while also considering how Tulsa deals with the legacy of the massacre and ongoing racial injustice today. Fox sportscaster Young has a big social media presence.
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October 15, 2022
In 1921 a white mob destroyed Greenwood, a prosperous, self-sufficient Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, attacking residents and looting and burning homes, businesses, schools, and churches. Survivors lost everything; the dead were buried in unmarked graves. Journalist Young (Let It Bang, 2018) challenges standard accounts of the atrocity with a compelling, extensively researched history of Greenwood and the massacre. He argues forcefully that since then, prevailing historical narratives tailored to white sensibilities have impeded a true reckoning and meaningful reparations for the massacre and, more broadly, for the legacy of slavery in Tulsa and the country. Young writes with the storytelling power of immersive journalism and the emotional immediacy of memoir. He uses personal experience to illuminate the human impact of systemic racism, particularly in education and employment. His visceral reactions to Tulsa's centennial commemorations of the massacre exemplify the harm in looking away from the raw realities of racial injustice. Not everyone will agree with Young, but Requiem for the Massacre will challenge every reader to examine their assumptions about race in America.
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November 21, 2022
Fox Sports analyst Young (Let It Bang) mixes memoir and history in this provocative study of the legacy of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. A century after white mobs destroyed the prosperous Black enclave of Greenwood, Young reflects on his own experiences as a Black teenager in Tulsa struggling under fierce pressure from his parents to succeed by assimilating to the city’s white culture. Eventually feeling triumph in his decision to stay (“One of my most prominent acts of resistance and self-determination has been to buy a house here”), Young is at his strongest when he critiques Tulsa’s commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the massacre, pointing out how events meant to bridge the city’s racial divides only reinforced them: ceremonies largely attended by white Tulsans took place in locales difficult for Black Tulsans to reach, while a mixed crowd attending a q&a with the creators of the HBO series Watchmen (which takes place in Tulsa) were subjected to a graphic scene from the series depicting an attempted lynching. Though some of Young’s digressions run long, he skillfully captures the insidious workings of racism. The result is a fierce and poignant portrait of the aftereffects of racial violence.
August 1, 2022
June 2021 marked the centennial of the horrific race riot that destroyed Tulsa's thriving Black community. Longtime Tulsa resident and national college football analyst Young (Let It Bang: A Young Black Man's Reluctant Odyssey into Guns) writes a personal understanding of what happened, how, and its meaning over the years. He traces how Black people flocked to what became Tulsa's Greenwood district, a city within the city with nearly 40 blocks of Black-owned and -operated businesses, including offices of clergymen, doctors, and lawyers. Young explains it was a special place--the envy of many and a blot on the white supremacist social order. At its core, this is a memoir that uses his coming to terms with the 1921 riot to reflect on his journey to understand what it means to be Black in the U.S. and in Tulsa, past and present. More than a personal story emerges from Young's reflections and immersive journalism; he recreates Tulsa as a place where Black community networking succeeded enough to enrage whites to massacre and suppress that fact for generations. VERDICT This beckons to readers willing to examine whether the centennial of the Tulsa Massacre reflected a reckoning and the substance of change, or was merely a spectacle of lip service.--Thomas J. Davis
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Starred review from September 15, 2022
A unique synthesis of memoir and a history of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Tulsa native Young, a FOX Sports analyst, offers an ambitious, forceful continuance of his debut memoir, Let It Bang, focused on his development as a consciously Black writer while dogged by the massacre's uneasy centennial. The author opens with the horrific flashpoint, in which an ambiguous encounter between a Black boy and a White girl spiraled into an attempted lynching followed by the coordinated destruction of the Greenwood district, the so-called Black Wall Street, by the National Guard and White citizens. Decades of denial suggested premeditation motivated by envy over the accomplishments of the Greenwood community. "White folks decided they'd had enough of the luminous district many saw as a leprosy," writes Young, "and they aimed to kill it." In addition to recounting the history, Young interweaves a jaundiced, potent examination of his own upbringing. He rebelled gradually against his conservative churchgoing parents as he endured a casually menacing racism that reflected the legacy of the massacre. Yet while enduring poverty, depression, and a failed marriage in his 20s, he found improbable salvation in Oklahoma's athletic tradition, breaking through as a sportswriter and radio personality. In the final chapters, Young highlights his emotional disbelief over the tone-deaf centennial celebration. "No one outside of this place much cares what happens to it," he writes, "only what had once happened to it when white Tulsans murdered Black Tulsans." The author also reflects thoughtfully on thorny subtopics ranging from interracial relationships to Donald Trump's grotesque return to the rally stage, in Tulsa, at the height of the pandemic. The swerve toward the personal is occasionally jarring, but the author's prose is consistently acute and his societal analysis, astute. "To be a Black American," he writes, "is to want some of what white folks have and to hate yourself for wanting it all at once." An arresting account of Black ambition and endurance from an important new voice in narrative nonfiction.
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