The Burning: MASSACRE, DESTRUCTION, aND tHE TULSA RACE RIOT oF 1921

By: Tim Madigan

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Synopsis: ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 1, 1921, A WHITE MOB NUMBERING in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America’s most prosperous. Thirty-four square blocks of Tulsa’s Greenwood community, known then as the Negro Wall Street of America, were reduced to smoldering rubble. With chilling details, humanity, and the narrative thrust of compelling fiction, The Burning re-creates the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explores the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and Tulsa’s neighboring white population, narrates events leading up to and including Greenwood’s annihilation, and documents the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy that became known as the Tulsa Race Riot.