The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 by Tim Madigan illustrated the horrendous racial conflict between the white and black people of Tulsa on May 31st and June 1st of 1921. Madigan detailed how white mobs burned the entire community of Greenwood, an African-American community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The race riot was triggered by the arrest of a young black man for a false accusation of assault by a white woman in an elevator. White supremacist groups gathered to lynch the accused black man, Diamond Dick. African American people gathered to defend the accused black man from being murdered by the white mobs. Since both groups were armed, violence broke out that led to the murder of many innocent black people in Tulsa. After the heinous event, people refused to talk about and acknowledge the dark event of history. Throughout the novel, Tim Madigan details the narratives and background that led to the explosive violence of the race riot.
One of the main
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The violence that was brought upon black people was fueled by ingrained racism from the civil war era. Previous confederate soldiers held bitter resentment towards black people, and the government did little to protect the rights of black people after the civil war. Any signs of black prosperity were met with violence from white people who were angered that black people challenged white superiority. Any sign of success of black people in Greenwood only made them targets of white supremacists. White people often considered themselves as "the hand that fed black people", and any sign of black people challenging that standard were at risk to be "disciplined" and made subservient or even murdered. Since the government did not enforce standards on the southern states to protect African American’s rights, Jim Crow laws ruled in the south for the white people to limit black prosperity and maintain white