When HBO’s TV series Watchmen (2019) and Lovecraft Country (2020) splashed across our screens, recreating the historical event now known as the Tulsa Massacre, Americans of all races were flabbergasted that a story so brutal, so significant had been seemingly lost to history.
Few had known the details of the mass killing of Black people by white mobs in what at that time was thought to be the wealthiest Black community in the United States.
After the collective shock, multiple projects were born from originators such as NBA superstars LeBron James and Russell Westbrook, as well as Dream Hampton (executive producer of the documentary Surviving R Kelly), all aiming to tell this story of Black economic success torn asunder by white racism.
But as is often the case, history is more complex than it seems. Why were there so many African Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the turn of the 20th century? Why were they able to become so successful in a period of time, the late 1800s and early 1900s, known for the collapse of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim