Angel of Greenwood
Page 19
“Every family represented here is a light of knowing,” he said with as much might as he could build from his gut. “This, my friends, is more important by leagues than any brick and mortar. This, men, cannot be burned away from us. You see? It was not our homes or our businesses that the white men were trying to steal away that fateful night. No, it was the knowing they saw building up within our bodies. The posture elevating our shoulders back to neutral. Back, friends, to where they’d been before they pushed us on boats and brought us here.
“Booker T. Washington once said that ‘one man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.’ This is dead to rights but unfinished. What Washington left unsaid is, sooner or later, the focus of the held-down man eventually shifts. Through battle, his arms lean and develop muscles strong enough to propel him out, leaving his captor there alone to rot in his rage.”
“But shouldn’t we go back?” Deacon Yancey raised his hand to ask Isaiah as if he were in school. “Now that we have no place, should we return to the land of our ancestors?”
Isaiah observed the men nodding to the deacon’s suggestion. He took it in for a moment, and smiled knowingly. “My dear deacon,” Isaiah started, “this is our land now. We would be foreigners in the lands of our ancestors. Without language or knowledge of customs, we’d be starting over. Unwelcomed, sadly, by those we were taken away from all those generations ago.”
The same men that nodded to the deacon’s idea, now shifted in agreement with Isaiah. “That’s a valid point you have there, young man,” Deacon Yancey said, again sitting quietly.
“They brought us here”—Isaiah stood over them like a father among sons—“to build a country from nothing. To work the lands, shepherd the sheep, and, dear God, to breed. They did not, however, anticipate us.” Isaiah held his arms out wide and spun around, highlighting now-scorched Greenwood.
The other men looked around to see only ashes in the distance. No buildings left standing or homes to gather in for shelter.
“But they’ve burned us to the ground, son,” interjected Mr. Monty.
In response, Isaiah leaped down to the grassy field, and all men followed his every movement with their eyes. “Look over there,” Isaiah said, pointing to his ma and Miss Ferris’s makeshift kitchen, where they handed out firsts and seconds of vegetable soup and corn bread to waiting townsfolk. “Do they look burned to you?”
A chorus of nos and even no, sirs followed Isaiah’s moving, expressive body.
“What about there?” He motioned toward Mrs. Nichelle, who’d taken on the task of children under two. She’d gathered as many blankets as possible, stacking them onto the grass to create a playpen for the teetering bunch. “Does that look like a woman who’s allowed her circumstance to stop her?”
Again, many nos and even more no, sirs rose from the small sphere of men. Vice Principal Anniston, Mrs. Nichelle’s husband, waved over at her with such pride and gratitude that he had to wipe at his eyes.
“And then there’s my Angel.” Isaiah didn’t make a show of highlighting her; he instead looked at her calmly and with more reverence than he had toward anyone else in that field. “Savior. Teacher. Leader. There are not enough words to describe such a woman. She will never allow herself to be defeated by anyone, not even me. She is what our future looks like—brave and brilliant and still holding tight to the powerful forces that only come from one single source, love. She is Greenwood—riddled with heavy loss and pain but still moving onward. Upward. With resolve that no white man could ever regain. Once he’s lost the likes of Angel, he’s lost the lot of us.
“They will never have her, men, mark those words and brand them onto your arms and hearts and wills. She belongs, as much as she’d like, to me.”
“Well, son,” Mr. Morris called out. “Go to her.”
Isaiah hopped from his stoop and walked briskly in Angel’s direction. Her students oohed and aahed at his approach. Greenwood folks stopped and watched him closing the gap between himself and his love.
The closer he got, the more he picked up the pace. He wanted to lift her into the air. To breathe in her cocoa-butter skin as long as she’d allow him to. But when he was close enough to touch her, Truly stepped in front of him with her arms folded.
“May I help you, mister?”
Isaiah bent forward to meet Truly’s large eyes. “I’d like to ask permission to speak with your teacher, if you please.”
“You certainly may not,” she said, tapping her foot in the dirt. “Just what are your intentions with Miss Angel? And tell the truth or I’ll know.”
After a quick wink in Isaiah’s direction, Angel crouched in front of Truly.
“Truly, girl…,” she started. “The wisest man I’ve ever known once told me that mercy and truth can’t exist without one another,” Angel said, tucking a flyaway behind Truly’s ear.
“Well,” Truly replied, filled with attitude. “That’s what I’m trying to do right now, Miss Angel. Get the truth out of this rambling boy called Isaiah Wilson.”
“You should show mercy to Mr. Isaiah, correct?”
“How do I do that?” she asked.
“Allow him to pass.”
As Truly, tiny but fierce, stepped aside, Isaiah pulled Angel in close and whispered, “Just so,” into her ear.
SUCCESS IS TO BE MEASURED NOT SO MUCH BY THE POSITION THAT ONE HAS REACHED IN LIFE AS BY THE OBSTACLES WHICH HE HAS OVERCOME.
—BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
I WAS BORN FREE.
—W.E.B. DU BOIS
MY AUTHOR’S NOTE IS AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This novel began as my novels do—it was to be something else entirely. Before, it was the story of a fictional place I’d tentatively referred to as My Wakanda. No superheroes or fields of magical flowers to swallow, no. Just a simple, self-sustaining Black community where two Black teens got to freely fall in love. That’s it. That’s the magical place I was trying to write.
They rode bikes up and down flower-lined streets. They shared ice cream at the parlor owned by their neighbor named Fred. They went to the same pediatrician, Dr. Watts, on the corner in the squatty brick building just off Main Street. They loved books and movies and plain white milk straight from the carton. It was to be a quiet book where not much happened outside of the two of them going on about the business of falling in love.
I never expected that book to be published since there was no real story. I didn’t care, though. I wrote it for me, dreaming more than I was writing. All the while visualizing a place where my Black daughter and Black son could walk and bike and eat ice cream and eventually fall in love in peace. That’s Wakanda for me. Simplicity is My Wakanda. And writing it was a delight.
Greenwood after the attack, June 1921. (Getty Images)
But one afternoon in my wonderful friend Claudia Pearson’s home, I met one of the best librarians in the world, Lisa Churchill. She asked me what I was working on, and I told her about the My Wakanda book. In response, she shared the story of Greenwood. My dream had been an actual place, realized in the 1900s. And then it was burned to the ground. Those two unnamed characters became Angel and Isaiah on the spot. And that sweet little novel became a complicated one, Angel of Greenwood.
As for acknowledgments, though …
I acknowledge that I am tired.
I acknowledge now that all I want from this life is a safe place for my Black children to get to fall in love.
I acknowledge that doesn’t sound like a lot, but for Black folks in this country, it can be damn near impossible. And the burning of Greenwood and other places like it directly contributed to that near impossibility.
Greenwood today, never to be forgotten. (Top left: Associated Press; Top right: Associated Press; Bottom: Associated Press)
Finally, I acknowledge that so many Black people before me dreamed of their own versions of Wakanda, too.
Please allow me to acknowledge some of them:
Colonel Allen Allensw
orth
Allensworth, CA
1908
Oliver Toussaint Jackson
Dearfield, CO
1910
Joseph C. Clarke & Lewis Lawrence
Eatonville, FL
1887
Priscilla “Mother” Baltimore
Brooklyn, IL
1820s
Free Frank McWhorter
New Philadelphia, IL
1836
Joshua Lyles
Lyles Station, IN
1840s
Jack Moss
Mossville, LA
1790
Joe Penny
Pennytown, MO
1871
Isaiah Montgomery
Mound Bayou, MS
1887
Clem Deaver
DeWitty, NE
1907
Thomas Marshall
Marshalltown, NJ
1830s
Frank and Ella Boyer
Blackdom, NM
early 1900s
Frank and Ella Boyer
Vado, NM
1920s
Andrew Williams
Seneca Village, NY
1825
Epiphany Davis
Seneca Village, NY
1825
James Weeks
Weeksville, NY
1838
A. R. Brooks
Brooksville, OK
1903
Edward McCabe
Langston, OK
1890
E. L. Barber
Redbird, OK
1889
Harrison Barrett
Barrett, TX
1889
Jeff and Hanna Hill
Little Egypt, TX
1870
Anderson Moore
Moore Station, TX
1876
Robert and Dilsie Johnson
Mosier Valley, TX
1870s
James and Winnie Shankle
Shankleville, TX
1867
I sincerely hope someone writes books about them. EACH OF THEM DESERVES BOOKS! Do it, dammit! Or I will.
—Randi*
FACTS OF THE ATTACK
While Angel of Greenwood is a fictional account, the 1921 Attack on the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, tragically happened.
After World War I, Greenwood was widely referred to first as the “Negro Wall Street of America” and later as the “Black Wall Street” because of their thriving business district and close-knit residential community. It was one of the most affluent Black communities in the country at the time, until the morning of May 30, 1921, in Tulsa’s Drexel Building when a young white woman named Sarah Page screamed while riding an elevator with a young Black man named Dick Rowland.
What exactly happened on that elevator varies from person to person. Precisely what happened on that elevator may never be known. But as a result of Page’s scream, Tulsa law enforcement officers arrested Dick Rowland the following day and began an investigation. That same day, an incendiary report in the Tulsa Tribune boasted the headline Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in an Elevator. This encouraged a confrontation at the courthouse where Rowland was being held. Several dozen Black men, some of them World War I veterans, armed themselves and went to the courthouse to protect Rowland from a threatening white mob gathering to attack him. Tempers flared, and shots were fired. Again, there are differing accounts of who shot first, but outnumbered, the Black people at the courthouse retreated back to the Greenwood District.
In the early morning hours of June 1, 1921, idyllic, prosperous, exceptional Greenwood was looted and burned by white rioters. In a span of fewer than twenty-four hours, thirty-five city blocks were charred, over eight hundred people were treated for injuries, and historians have estimated that somewhere between one hundred and three hundred lives were lost.
This event went largely unknown, even by descendants and residents of Tulsa. But in 2001, an official race riot commission named the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was organized to review the details of the event. And recently, Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum launched an investigation into longstanding oral-history accounts of mass graves at various sites in Tulsa.
Inside of every Greenwood home burned that day in 1921 there was a story. Few who experienced it are alive today. Many of those stories will never be told, though the Commission previously mentioned recorded interviews with many survivors still living at the time of its deliberations and report, some two decades ago. Angel and Isaiah are fictional. That much is true, but within them, I honor Greenwood. And, dear God, I pray I’ve done it justice.
SOURCES
1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. tulsa2021.org.
Astor, Maggie. “What to Know About the Tulsa Greenwood Massacre.” The New York Times, June 20, 2020. nytimes .com/2020/06/20/us/tulsa-greenwood-massacre.html.
Booker, Brakkton. “Excavation Begins for Possible Mass Grave From 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.” National Public Radio/WNYC, July 14, 2020. npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/07/14/890785747/excavation-begins-for-possible-mass-grave-from-1921-tulsa-race-massacre.
———. “Oklahoma Lawsuit Seeks Reparations in Connection to 1921 Tulsa Massacre.” National Public Radio/WNYC, September 3, 2020. npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/09/03/909151983/oklahoma-lawsuit-seeks-reparations-in-connection-to-1921-tulsa-massacre.
Chakraborty, Ranjani. “The Massacre of Tulsa’s ‘Black Wall Street’.” Vox, February 27, 2019. youtube.com/watch?v=x-ItsPBTFO0.
Chang, Alisa. “The History and Legacy of Tulsa Race Massacre.” All Things Considered. National Public Radio, June 19, 2020. npr .org/2020/06/19/880964037/the-history-and-legacy-of-tulsa-race-massacre.
Chang, Natalie. “The Massacre of Black Wall Street.” TheAtlantic .com, sponsored by Watchmen on HBO. theatlantic.com /sponsored/hbo-2019/the-massacre-of-black-wall-street/3217/?gclid=CjwKCAjwzvX7BRAeEiwAsXExo3hJzVqPLs0tewzrNk5fXZ4S46YW3WxXetPRoYjYxWJRmFudYzcopBoCu34QAvD_BwE.
Clark, Alexis. “Tulsa’s Black Wall Street Flourished as a Self-Contained Hub in the Early 1900s.” History.com, January 2, 2020. history.com/news/black-wall-street-tulsa-race-massacre.
Clark, Nia. “Introduction: Black Wall Street 1921.” Black Wall Street 1921, January 29, 2020. blackwallstreet-1921.com.
Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica online. “Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.” Encyclopedia Britannica online, September 30, 2020. britannica.com/event/Tulsa-race-riot-of-1921.
Editors of Tulsa World. “Read an Early Tulsa World Account of the Tulsa Race Riot.” Tulsa World, May 30, 2016. tulsaworld.com /news/local/june-1-1921-read-an-early-tulsa-world-account-of-the-tulsa-race-riot/article_569a56c8-93f8-502c-b236-ac91aa632e51.html.
Ellsworth, Scott. “Tulsa Race Massacre.” Oklahoma Historical Society. okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry .php?entry=TU013.
Frazee, Gretchen. “What Happened 99 Years Ago in the Tulsa Race Massacre.” PBS News Hour, June 19, 2020. pbs.org/newshour /nation/what-happened-99-years-ago-in-the-tulsa-race-massacre.
Huddleston, Tom, Jr. “’Black Wall Street’: The history of the wealthy Black community and the massacre perpetrated there.” CNBC .com, July 4, 2020. cnbc.com/2020/07/04/what-is-black-wall-street-history-of-the-community-and-its-massacre.html.
Johnson, Hannibal B. Acres of Aspiration: The All-Black Towns of Oklahoma. Fort Worth, Texas: Eakin Press, 2002.
———. Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District. Fort Worth, Texas: Eakin Press, 2007.
———. Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples with Its Historical Rachial Trauma. Fort Worth, Texas: Eakin Press, 2020.
———. Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District. Mount Pleasant, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2014.
Keyes, Allison. “A Long-Lost Manuscript Contains a Searing Eyewitness Account of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.” Smithsonian Magazine, May 27
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Randi Pink is the author of Girls Like Us, a School Library Journal Best Book of 2019, and Into White, also published by Feiwel and Friends, an imprint of Macmillan. She lives with her family in Birmingham, Alabama. Visit randipink.com, or sign up for email updates here.