Black Birds in the Sky Read online

  As if rapidly mounting deaths from the pandemic, and killings of Black Americans at the hands of police weren’t enough, 2020 was also a presidential election year in the United States.

  With a country growing increasingly divided, due in large part to divisive leadership, few people were looking forward to an election cycle that would have been stressful even under normal circumstances. And as the campaigns kicked off in earnest, President Trump announced his decision to hold his first public rally after the onset of the pandemic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19—otherwise known as Juneteenth. Although it is not yet established as a national holiday, many states recognize and commemorate Juneteenth as an observance of June 19, 1865, the date upon which Union soldiers traveled to Galveston, Texas, to inform the state’s two hundred fifty thousand enslaved people that they were free—more than two and a half years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Celebrations include a variety of activities such as barbecues and rodeos, and red foods such as watermelon, hot links, red velvet cake, and red soda are often served.

  Trump’s plan to hold a rally on the commemoration of this historic day was met with widespread opposition, to say the least.

  Attorney, poet, and educator CeLillianne Green told the Washington Post the Trump campaign’s decision was “almost blasphemous to the people of Tulsa and insulting to the notion of freedom for our people, which is what Juneteenth symbolizes. I’m speechless. That day is the day those people in Texas found out they were free. The juxtaposition of the massacre of Black people and Juneteenth, the delayed notice you are free, is outrageous. Juneteenth symbolized our freedom.”

  Trump denied he purposely set the Tulsa rally on June 19, but a couple of days later, he announced the date would be changed.

  To list the entirety of what I consider to be harmful policies and errors in judgment enacted by this president would take more space than I am allowed here, and is not necessarily energy I feel would be useful for this book. But again, as I researched Reconstruction, the years after the Civil War ended, I was struck by Trump’s similarities to Andrew Johnson, who stepped into the presidency after Lincoln was assassinated. And I wasn’t alone in noticing this; countless articles have been written about the parallels between the two men, whose presidential terms took place more than 150 years apart.

  In an article for the New York Times, Professor Manisha Sinha wrote: “Both Johnson’s and Mr. Trump’s concept of American nationalism is narrow, parochial, and authoritarian. Johnson opposed the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, that guarantees equality before the law to all persons and citizenship to all born in the United States. Mr. Trump has threatened both to revoke its constitutional guarantee of national birthright citizenship and have the entire amendment overturned.” And in a short list of presidential impeachments, Johnson was the first president to be impeached, while Trump is the most recent (though Johnson was impeached only once).

  In addition to both presidents pardoning people who committed unpatriotic crimes (Confederate generals and white people who murdered Black people in Johnson’s case, a Navy SEAL “who violated the military’s rules of conduct” in Trump’s); Johnson’s “rambling, drunken” speech as he took the oath of office for the vice presidency and Trump’s “presidential campaign full of grotesque insults, ridicule, lies, and vulgarity”; and both “engag[ing] in actions that have dangerous repercussions for American democracy”; Sinha went on to note that “most significantly, both men made an undisguised championship of white supremacy . . . and played on the politics of racial division.”

  The stress of the 2020 election was further compounded by the still-raging pandemic; as the deaths continued to mount, Americans had to decide whether they should risk voting in person or use mail-in or drop-off ballots. And, in the months leading up to the election, the Trump administration and pro-Trump Republicans did their best to undermine the voting system, hearkening back to the voter suppression tactics that have run rampant in past decades across the United States, but most egregiously in the South.

  Election Day turned into Election Week as states worked hard to count an unprecedented number of votes; according to the Washington Post, “More Americans voted in the 2020 election—two-thirds of the voting eligible population—than in any other in 120 years.” This record voter turnout was in large part due to the tireless efforts of Black women activists and politicians like Stacey Abrams, whose years of dedication to fair elections resulted in flipping several states from Republican in 2016 to Democrat in 2020, along with turning the Senate from majority-Republican to majority-Democrat in a historic runoff election in January 2021. However, though Joseph Biden—whose running mate, Kamala Harris, is the first woman, Black woman, and woman of Indian descent to serve as vice president—received eighty-one million votes, the most of any presidential candidate ever, the election was close. Nearly 47 percent of the country, or more than seventy-four million Americans, voted for Donald Trump.

  As the days of Trump’s presidency were coming to an end, many of his supporters refused to accept the fact that he had lost the election—a refusal that was directly attributed to his own unsubstantiated claims that he had won the election and that Americans around the country had engaged in voter fraud that resulted in Biden’s win. And with the encouragement of senators such as Josh Hawley (who represents my home state of Missouri) and Ted Cruz from Texas, thousands of these supporters stormed the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, to overturn the presidential election results, or “stop the steal.” Bearing guns, tear gas, police restraints, and zip ties, among other weapons and occupation gear, the primarily white mob hung a noose in front of the building, damaged federal property, and burst into the Senate chamber, forcing members of Congress to go on lockdown. Whatever it was that happened—a failed coup d’état? An insurrection? A good old-fashioned riot?—Americans watched in horror as Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, leaving at least five people dead, including a Capitol police officer.

  Many of them wondered: Where was law enforcement? After all, peaceful Black Lives Matter activists protesting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in June 2020 had been met by a wall of armed and uniformed National Guard members. In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot, video emerged of police officers taking selfies with rioters, and appearing to open barricades, established to prevent precisely this sort of unauthorized access, to people who would threaten the legislative branch of government. And, at the time of this writing, dozens of off-duty police officers and public officials from around the country have been questioned or arrested in connection with the attack on the Capitol—and investigations are still ongoing.

  On January 13, one week before he was set to leave office, Trump became the first president to be impeached twice—this time for “inciting violence against the government of the United States.” For history buffs, the events of January 6 brought to mind the meticulously planned 1898 insurrection, or massacre, in Wilmington, North Carolina, in which an armed mob of white supremacists overthrew their local government, which included Black and white politicians; burned down the office of Black newspaper the Daily Record; and murdered dozens of Black people. The mob was never punished, and for decades, their actions were attributed to a “race riot,” which the Black people they’d terrorized were accused of instigating.

  In the days after Biden was named president-elect, many people wondered how so many Americans—nearly enough to give Trump a second term—were willing to vote for someone who had done so much to damage the country’s democracy, reputation, and integrity.

  I personally believe much of it is because Americans don’t know their history. Results from a fifty-state survey released in September 2020 showed that 63 percent of Gen Z and millennial respondents didn’t know that six million Jewish people had been killed in the Holocaust, and 36 percent believed “two million or fewer” were murdered. According to the Claims Conference, “In perhaps one of the most disturbing revelations o
f this survey, 11 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust.” Of the survey respondents, 48 percent couldn’t name a single concentration camp or ghetto in Europe during the Holocaust.

  This is abhorrent and extremely upsetting, especially coupled with the high percentage of respondents who had encountered Holocaust denial on social media—the same social media sites on which President Trump incited violence from his supporters, and from which he was broadly banned in January 2021. For a horror like the Holocaust to be denied or widely unknown just seventy-five years after the largest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz, was liberated, is unfathomable. And the fact that social media is also partially to blame for disinformation and the growth of hate groups is troubling, considering how big a part it plays in so many of our lives.

  But it also helps me see why a tragedy like the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 could be so effectively hidden for decades. Trauma is painful. It’s difficult to discuss, and often even harder to make sense of. But pretending so-called unspeakable things simply didn’t happen is not the way to grow, to become better people or make a better world. Not only is it utterly disrespectful to the people who lost their lives in such genocides, but it is detrimental to the lives and progress of the survivors and their descendants.

  I don’t like to tell people what to take from my books. I prefer my readers to interpret the words for themselves, to discover the themes and significance through their own reasoning with the information given. But if there is one thing readers take from this book, I hope it is that history matters. Stories matter, and it also matters who is telling these stories.

  I think about how my parents grew up in a small Arkansas county that had been home to one of the deadliest race massacres in United States history, and how I grew up in a town where a triple lynching had led to the decimation of the Black community decades before I was born, and how for the first twenty-two years of my life, I unknowingly lived three hours away from a neighborhood that was the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre. How could my life, or my ancestors’ lives, have been different if just one of those events had turned out differently? What would this country look like if more Black people grew up being taught their history as much as they are taught the stories of white Americans? How would people interact with one another if white Americans learned early on that they are not the center of every story, or that their stories are not the only ones that matter?

  I am haunted by these questions the further I dig into this country’s past, but I’m not deterred. And while I hope this book contains some answers about the history of the complex relationship between the United States and Black Americans, I hope it also raises some questions for its readers.

  A framed art print hangs in my home that reads ASK MORE QUESTIONS. I’ve always valued this advice; I see it as a nod to my love of journalism, which I spent four years studying in college. But these words are, first and foremost, a fervent reminder to continue seeking out the truth every day, and to never stop sharing it.

  —Brandy Colbert, February 2021

  Acknowledgments

  Although I have worked in journalism in some capacity for my entire adult life, I never saw myself writing a nonfiction book. I knew as soon as I began talking about Black Birds in the Sky that it would be a huge undertaking, but I wasn’t prepared for just how rewarding it would be in the end. And, like all of my previous books, I could not have done it without the help of so many dedicated, talented people.

  Tina Dubois, this is our seventh book and tenth year of working together. Your belief in and encouragement of my work over the last decade has been so deeply meaningful. Thank you for being such a fierce advocate of my writing and a wonderful friend to me.

  Jordan Brown! I so admire your big brain and big heart, and I’m incredibly grateful for the work you’ve put into this book. Thank you for your insight, smart questions, and precise edits that made me feel confident I dug as deep as possible when it was possible. I’m proud to have worked on this with you.

  And to the rest of the team at Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, especially Alessandra Balzer, Donna Bray, Tiara Kittrell, Alison Donalty, Mark Rifkin, Josh Weiss, Nellie Kurtzman, Shannon Cox, Audrey Diestelkamp, Aubrey Churchward, Patty Rosati, and Victor Hendrickson, thank you for everything you’ve done for me and this book. It’s an honor to work with such a terrific group of people.

  Corina Lupp and Natasha Cunningham, thank you for honoring Black Birds in the Sky with such a beautiful, evocative cover. Shona McCarthy, Erica Ferguson, and Megan Gendell, I am also a copy editor and fact-checker, and I could not have asked for a better team to work on this book. I’m forever grateful for the meticulous care and respect you showed for every sentence.

  Thank you to Luke Williams, archivist and curator of collections at the Tulsa Historical Society, for working so efficiently to help us obtain the bulk of the photos for this book.

  Harry Gamble, thank you for helping me understand the beauty in learning about the past. You’re a raconteur of the highest order and your spontaneous stories during our workdays all those years ago in Chicago made me realize just how compelling history can be.

  I’m indebted to several writers and historians whose work immensely aided my research, particularly Scott Ellsworth, Eddie Faye Gates, and Hannibal B. Johnson. The “Tulsa Race Riot: A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921” and the Oklahoma Historical Society site were especially helpful in crafting large sections of this book.

  And, finally, I’m thankful to my family, particularly my parents, for always telling me the truth about where we come from. Even when the memories are uncomfortable to revisit. I am grateful for your stories and your love.

  Source List and Image Credits

  Foreword

  4: “one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history”: Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, “The Forgotten History of America’s Worst Racial Massacre,” New York Times, September 30, 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/opinion/elaine-massacre-1919-arkansas.html.

  6–9: 1906 triple lynching in Springfield: Jenny Fillmer, “1906 Lynchings Grew from Tensions, Racism—Thriving Black Community Died,” Springfield News-Leader, April 14, 2006, www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2006/04/14/1906-lynchings-grew-from-tensions-racism-thriving-black-community-died/77385626.

  10: August 2002 plaque: Associated Press, “Springfield Installs Plaque Remembering Lynchings,” Southeast Missourian, August 5, 2002, www.semissourian.com/story/83976.html.

  10: Thomas Gilyard memorial: Ines Kagubare, “Truth and Reconciliation Sought as Joplin Lynching Recalled,” Joplin Globe, April 15, 2018, www.joplinglobe.com/news/local_news/truth-and-reconciliation-sought-as-joplin-lynching-recalled/article_282f07b1-1c10-50a8-b589-ecb28e92cbd8.html.

  10: October 2019 historical marker: Sara Karnes, “Coalition Unveils Marker for Three Men Lynched at Park Central Square in 1906,” Springfield News-Leader, October 2, 2019, www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2019/10/02/springfield-missouri-lynching-park-central-square-memorial/3829563002.

  May 30, 1921

  12: Genevieve Elizabeth Tillman Jackson quote: “Meet the Survivors,” Greenwood Cultural Center, John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation, www.jhfcenter.org/1921-race-massacre-survivors.

  12: image: Tulsa Historical Society & Museum

  13–16: Dick Rowland / Jimmie Jones background: Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2001), 47–49.

  14–15: Plessy v. Ferguson: Judgment decided May 18, 1896; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; Plessy v. Ferguson, 163, #15248, National Archives. www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=52.

  1. Oklahoma! Soon Be Livin’ in a Brand-New State

  18: Beulah Lane Keenan Smith quote: “Meet the Survivors,” Greenwood Cultural Center, John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation, www.jhfcenter.org/1921-race-massacre-survivors.
/>   18: image: Tulsa Historical Society & Museum

  22: Andrew Jackson enslaved about 150 people: DeNeen L. Brown, “Hunting Down Runaway Slaves: The Cruel Ads of Andrew Jackson and ‘the Master Class,’” Washington Post, May 1, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/04/11/hunting-down-runaway-slaves-the-cruel-ads-of-andrew-jackson-and-the-master-class.

  23, 25: “the Indian problem” and “a trail of tears and death”: “Trail of Tears,” History.com, updated July 7, 2020, www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears.

  25: image: NPS.gov

  26: “celebrate the Mvskoke (Muscogee) people”: “Where It All Began: Muscogee (Creek) Nation Reflects Arrival to Indian Territory, History of Council Oak Tree,” Muscogee (Creek) Nation, October 24, 2018, www.mcn-nsn.gov/reflects-arrival-to-indian-territory-history-of-council-oak-tree.

  30: “I salute Kentucky Daisey’s claim!”: Stan Hoig, “Daisey, Nanitta R. H.,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=DA004.

  33: The Curtis Act: M. Kaye Tatro, “Curtis Act (1898),” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=CU006.