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A Black History on the Conflict, Hope, and Fallout of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
by RJ Young
With journalistic skill, heart, and hope, Requiem for the Massacre reckons with the tension in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one hundred years after the most infamous act of racial violence in American history
More than one hundred years ago, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, perpetrated a massacre against its Black residents. For generations, the true story was ignored, covered up, and diminished by those in power and in a position to preserve the status quo. Blending memoir and immersive journalism, RJ Young shows how, today, Tulsa combats its racist past while remaining all too tolerant of racial injustice.
Requiem for the Massacre is a cultural excavation of Tulsa one hundred years after one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. Young focuses on unearthing the narrative surrounding previously all-Black Greenwood district while challenging an apocryphal narrative that includes so-called Black Wall Street, Booker T. Washington, and Black exceptionalism. Young provides a firsthand account of the centennial events commemorating Tulsa's darkest day as the city attempts to reckon with its self-image, commercialization of its atrocity, and the aftermath of the massacre that shows how things have changed and how they have stayed woefully the same.
As Tulsa and the United States head into the next one hundred years, Young's own reflections thread together the stories of a community and a nation trying to heal and trying to hope.
"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's prose is consistently acute and his societal analysis, astute ... An arresting account of Black ambition and endurance from an important new voice in narrative nonfiction." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"At its core, [Requiem For the Massacre] is a memoir that uses [Young's] 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 ... 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." - Library Journal
"In recent years the horrors of the destruction of Greenwood, a thriving Black Tulsa neighborhood, have been resurrected by several authors, filmmakers and showrunners. Young's account not only relies on survivors' eyewitness testimony but adds the layer of his own upbringing in Oklahoma. Whether discussing his mother's support for Trump, the traumas of systemic racism or his early career as a sports journalist, Young reclaims the story of Tulsa's aftermath from the outsiders who have dominated recent coverage." - Los Angeles Times
"RJ Young has written a deeply-researched history of the Tulsa massacre. He rescues an event that has already crossed over for many into myth, returning it to its human origins and reminding us of the toll of its historical afterlives. A foundational book for any student of Black history and Black liberation." – Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of Libertie
"This fierce book attacks the whole spectrum of racism—from genocide to gentrification—that has colored life in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a century. Young is a curious and courageous local, and Requiem for the Massacre is his intense account of awakening to the lingering tentacles of the 1921 massacre and wrestling with how to help heal a city." - Ben Montgomery, author of A Shot in the Moonlight
This information about Requiem for the Massacre was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
RJ Young earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Tulsa, a master's degree at the University of Oklahoma and is a Ph.D student at Oklahoma State. His writing has appeared in Reuters, the Oklahoman, and USA Today. He is pulled over by the police more often than most white people change their sheets. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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