Black Birds In the Sky by Brandy Colbert

In Black Birds In The Sky, Brandy Colbert describes the events leading up to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the aftermath of that tragedy on the Black community and America as a country.

The story begins with the events of May 30, 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Many stores and businesses were closed for the parade scheduled later that morning. However, the shoeshine business that employed nineteen-year-old Dick Rowland was open. Rowland had been born Jimmie Jones. His early life had been difficult, as he and his three sisters were homeless and orphaned. He was eventually taken in by Damie Ford, a divorced black woman. Damie moved to Tulsa to be closer to her family, the Rowlands and to take advantage of the better job prospects in the booming city.

They eventually moved to the Greenwood District, a prosperous Black community that included many different Black professionals. These professionals supported one another and the Black community, with the area becoming so prosperous that it was given the nickname, Black Wall Street. When Jimmie started elementary school, he took on the name of Dick Rowland. Initially a good student, Dick dropped out during high school and began working at a shoe shine business owned by a white man. 

On that May Memorial Day in 1921, Rowland needed to use the bathroom, but because of the Jim Crow laws, he was required to use a "colored" bathroom. However, there was no "colored" washroom in the white shoe shine parlor, so Rowland went to use the bathroom in the Drexel building, something he had done many times previously. When he went to step into the elevator, operated by a young white woman named Sarah Page, it is believed Rowland tripped and grabbed her arm to steady himself. Page screamed in surprise and police were called by a clerk on the first floor who had heard her scream and saw Rowland leaving the building. Very quickly, Rowland became a suspect for attempted rape. This event became the trigger for the what would become one of the most horrific acts of racial violence in America.

 Discussion

Black Birds In The Sky is the heartrending story of the race riot in 1921, that saw hundreds of Black Americans injured or killed and their thriving Black community in the Greenwood District almost completely destroyed, razed by fire and looted.

Brandy Colbert begins by describing the events that were to ignite the Tulsa Race Massacre on September 1, 1921, namely the alleged interaction between Dick Rowland and Sarah Page. From there she goes on to describe the history of the land that would eventually become the state of Oklahoma. Colbert begins with the early Indigenous peoples who lived on the Oklahoma land, the European colonizers who explored and fought over ownership of the lands, and the forced settlement of Indigenous peoples (the Five Tribes which included Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole) from their ancestral lands in the eastern and southern United States onto the lands of Oklahoma and Kansas. This history emphasizes the deceitful manner in which European settlers and the American government dealt with various non-white peoples.

This deceit continued with the land runs in Oklahoma and Kansas. Now settled onto new lands, the Five Tribes were further subjected to traitorous land runs in which Americans and Europeans could simply claim "empty" land as their own. Colbert describes the land runs, which also included the migration of Black people to Oklahoma land and their eventual re-settling into towns. Despite these new areas of the continent not having a history of slavery, racial discrimination and segregation became entrenched.  By the time Oklahoma entered the Union in 1907, Jim Crow laws, which forced the segregation of Blacks, were already being enacted.

Colbert also describes what it was like to be Black in America during the post-Civil War period. The author discusses the Fifteenth Amendment which allowed Black men to vote and saw the election of Blacks to political office, the failure of Reconstruction,  and the rise of the Klu Klux Klan. The corruption of law enforcement towards the Black community is detailed. This includes the connection of American policing to slave patrols in the pre-Civil War period, and the rise of vigilantism and lynching towards Black men who were almost always assumed to be guilty of assault, rape or murder. 

The attitudes of white people towards Black Americans, even those who fought valiantly for America in World War I, was one of superiority and fear of social change. White Americans believed that Black veterans would demand equality and would use their weapons to obtain it. As a result, white Americans used political and justice systems to re-instate a new kind of slavery, one that denied Blacks their rights even when the Supreme Court ruled in their favour.  

 

Before she recounts the events of the Tulsa Race riot, Colbert explains the history of the Greenwood District, its founders Ottowa W. Gurley and John the Baptist (J.B.) Stradford. "By 1921, Greenwood was home to a Black hospital, a Black public library, two Black schools, two Black newspapers, two theaters, three fraternal organizations, five hotels, eleven boardinghouses, and about a dozen churches." In Deep Greenwood, the commercial district, "...one could find just about anything they needed in Deep Greenwood, with reportedly six hundred businesses within its thirty-five city blocks by 1921." Colbert writes, "...Greenwood was beginning to resemble neighborhoods in big cities like Chicago and New York, with its doctors and attorneys, theaters and restaurants, booming real estate market, and millionaires in the making."

According to Colbert, Greenwood was unique among other Black communities. "While Black people were still being disenfranchised in the Southern states from which many Greenwood residents had migrated, Greenwood was absolutely thriving. The community's focus on businesses that were Black-owned, Black-operated, and patronized primarily by Black people meant that each dollar spent in Greenwood would circulate throughout the businesses and people there around thirty times; the wealth stayed in the community and continued to grow it."  This all made for a great deal of resentment by white Tulsans who believed the Black community had no right to such success and wealth. 

All of these factors came together on May 31, 1921, to create a terrible firestorm of hatred and murder. From this point on, Colbert describes the events of the riot and its aftermath. Not surprisingly, "Black people were blamed for the massacre and punished for crimes they did not commit" while "...no white people were ever imprisoned for the murders and property destruction over the eighteen hours they terrorized Greenwood." What is perhaps even worse, was the erasure of the Tulsa Race Massacre from public discourse and from social memory. It would be fifty years before someone would publish an article on the massacre, bringing the events of the past to light once again. Today Black Tulsans focus on achieving a resolution to this tragedy, something that remains challenging to date.

Colbert's account is detailed, interesting and connects the many facets of American history to show how the groundwork was laid for the massacre and how Americans simply refused to acknowledge the tragedy afterwards, nor accept responsibility for what happened. Black Birds In The Sky is an important book in that regard, because it breaks that barrier of silence, informing a new generation and demonstrating the harm hatred does to people, communities and a nation. The book takes its title from the airplanes that were flown over Greenwood during the riot, firing on groups of Blacks. They appeared to those looking up, like black birds in the sky.

The Afterword explores the parallels between the events of 1918 to 1921 with a pandemic and race riot and the events of 2020 with the U.S. Election, the killings of Black Americans by police, and the Covid pandemic. Colbert notes "...how many harmful elements of US politics and culture have endured despite the progress we have achieved." The back matter contains a detailed Source List and Image Credits as well as an Index.  Black Birds In The Sky is a must read for all teens.

Book Details:

Black Birds In The Sky by Brandy Colbert
New York: Balzer + Bray      2021
216 pp

Angel of Greenwood by Randi Pink

Angel of Greenwood tells the story of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre through the eyes of two young people. The story begins on Thursday, May 19, twelve days before the riot. Angel Hill lives on Greenwood Avenue with her mother and her father who is terminally ill. Angel loves to help people as she's certain God has put her on the earth to help others. Angel helps her mother care for her father, and she helps her neighbours including Mrs. Nichelle who has a fussy baby.

After Angel dances at Sunday school, she attracts the attention of Isaiah Wilson, a boy who has taunted her along with his friend Muggy Jr. Angel recognizes Muggy as the real mean one, whereas Isaiah "was kinder...He simply didn't stand for anything. Isaiah went along to get along..." and that leads Angel not to respect him.

From his bedroom window, seventeen-year-old Isaiah Wilson watches a group of sixteen white boys on the other side of the tracks. Angel Hill who is walking towards them, is accosted by the group. Although she initially stands up to them, she flees. Isaiah wants to stand and yell at them, but instead he hides behind the curtains. Angel leaves behind some kind of walking contraption that one of the boys destroys in anger.

On the following Sunday, Isaiah is hauled to Mount Zion Baptist Sunday school by his mother. But far from being bored as usual, Isaiah is entranced by the worship dancing of Angel Hill.

The next day, while walking to school with his best friend Muggy Little Jr., Isaiah is distracted. Muggy's father owns a successful butcher shop in Greenwood and his family, along with many others in the district, have helped Isaiah's family since his father's death in the Great War. Muggy's father doesn't have a good reputation in the community: he is considered a "notorious double dealer with both his butcher business and his family". He flaunts women and his behaviour has Muggy beginning to have doubts about his father. 

Isaiah knows his friend is not a good person but can't seem to break free of him. He joins Muggy in his pranks, even when he knows those pranks are hurtful and embarrassing to others. During the day, Isaiah follows Muggy out to the back bleacher instead of going to Mrs. Greene's class to write his Latin test. When Isaiah daydreams about Angel, Muggy burns him on his forearm with a matchstick and threatens to tell Angel that Isaiah likes her. 

After English Literature class, Miss Ferris pulls Isaiah and Angel together and reveals that she's starting a sort of mobile library. She has a three-wheel bike and she needs someone to ride it and someone to hand out the books. Miss Ferris offers them the job with a pay of five dollars a week. Isaiah immediately accepts but Angel is reluctant because it means working with Isaiah whom she knows is not a nice boy. 

However, that changes when Donna Mae Bullock, at the urging of Muggy, steals Isaiah's journal one evening. Donna Mae shows up in Isaiah's bedroom to kiss him, but her real purpose is to steal his journal. However, when Isaiah manages to get Donna Mae to talk about herself she realizes what she's done and gets Muggy to return the journal, but not before Muggy reads to Angel the poem Isaiah wrote about her.

Eventually Angel accepts Miss Ferris's job offer and both Angel and Isaiah get to work on fixing up the decrepit three wheel bike. As love blossoms between the two, storm clouds are brewing over Greenwood, and neither Angel nor Isaiah know just how much life is about to change.

Discussion

Angel of Greenwood chronicles the days leading up to the Tulsa massacre of June 1 1921, through the eyes of two teenagers, Angel Hill and Isaiah Wilson as they fall in love. Author Randi Pink initially wrote a story of two Black teens who fall in love in a neighbourhood where it was safe to do so in peace. According to the Author's Note at the back of the novel, her original story was Pink's "My Wakanda" book. However, in a conversation with a friend, Pink learned  that the place she had dreamed of someday existing and had written about, really did once exist in the form of Greenwood, a district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. But Greenwood, a thriving, close-knit Black community that had become known as Black Wall street, was looted and burned to the ground by white rioters. The riot was triggered by events the preceding day in which a black man was arrested for an incident that occurred in an elevator with a white woman. At the end of the looting and burning, thirty-five blocks that comprised Greenwood lay in charred ruins and over one hundred people were dead. Pink decided to set her story against the backdrop of the Tulsa massacre and it's fortunate for young readers that she did so, because Angel of Greenwood is a remarkable novel.

Most of the novel portrays life in Greenwood prior to the riot. Pink does this through the two main characters and the people they meet in their day-to-day lives. The people of Greenwood are hard-working, God-fearing, neighbourly and not unlike people everywhere else and Pink offers a host of diverse characters to flesh out the community. There is Angel Hill, a gifted dancer, whose father is slowly dying from an unknown ailment. Angel is a hard-working girl, who spends time helping others such as her neighbour, Mrs. Nichelle. She helps Mrs. Nichelle to care for her little baby boy, Michael. Isaiah Wilson, whose father died in the Great War, is a good student with aspirations of attending college, who writes beautiful poetry. Isaiah seems unable to break away from his friend Muggy Little Jr. whose pranks humiliate and hurt others. Muggy Little Jr., whose father owns the butcher shop, is a bully and struggling to cope with his father's reputation as a liar and a cheat. There is Miss Ferris, the English Literature teacher who channels Isaiah's abilities into poetry and who starts the mobile book library. Mrs. Tate, whose husband owns the Greenwood pharmacy, has a son Timothy attending medical school. She has prize-winning junipers but is not known as a pleasant woman. There is Mr. Morris a kind and patient man whose son George now runs their wood-carving shop and Mrs. Turner with her tiny flower shop. Pink's depiction of a vibrant Greenwood District and its residents, a community where Black Americans are free to live their lives as they want,  makes reading about the burning of Greenwood all the more painful.

Besides being a novel about a largely forgotten event of racial hatred, Angel of Greenwood also explores the coming of age of Isaiah and Angel and to a lesser extent, Muggy. For Isaiah and Muggy it is a journey to redemption. 

Isaiah experiences a transformation from a neighbourhood troublemaker to the person he aspires to be. Isaiah is under the influence of Muggle Little Jr., boy with mean streak who delights in playing humiliating pranks on others. Isaiah knows he shouldn't follow Muggy's lead but he can't seem to stop. Isaiah wants to be different but feels his family is indebted to Muggy's family. "What was he to dare do? Challenge Muggy? Never. If he did, there would be hell to pay."

Isaiah hides the things that matter the most to him from Muggy: his love of poetry and books and reading. He hides the fact that he is in the top tenth percentile and that he has a secret plan to leave Greenwood. And for years he's gone along with bullying Angel Hill and many others. But when Isaiah sees Angel dance at church, his eyes are opened and he begins to change. From this point on, his attraction to Angel is the impetus for change.

It is only when Muggy steals Isaiah's journal of poetry and his college letters of intent to Morehouse and Howard, and in effect Isaiah's plan for success, that Isaiah is stirred to confront Muggy at his house.  Feeling freed from Muggy and his bad influence, Isaiah wants to be a better person for Angel but the prospect of him having to be responsible for his own behaviour is daunting. "Behave in ways she longed for a man to behave. With Muggy, he was mean. With Angel, he assumed, he would be better, kinder, and more empathetic. But without either, Isaiah was floating along with no leader to lead him. Secretly terrified to lead his own self." 

But Isaiah discovers he is able to lead himself, when Muggy hurts Mrs. Tate by revealing something about her son Timothy. He punches Muggy in the face, knocking the bully to the ground and gaining the respect of the community. This event leads Isaiah to make a serious decision about his life, deciding not to be selfish, lazy or unworthy. Isaiah comes to realize that Greenwood is a "... beacon of hope for his people..." and that he would use this gift to help his own people. From this point on, Isaiah begins to redeem himself, and ironically leads Muggy into doing the same.

For Angel, the journey is also about finding herself. Angel believes she has been put on Earth to help others. But as the days pass, she finds herself increasingly wanting something more for herself. These thoughts are stirred by the offer from Miss Ferris of working on the book mobile. Besides helping her parents, there "...was a selfish longing to get away from it all....When she was very small, Angel dreamed only of taking care of others. For the first time, she wanted a few hours per day to do only the thing she wanted to do."

As Black teenagers coming of age in the early 20th century, Angel and Isaiah want to live their lives like white teenagers in America do, having the same rights as their white counterparts. Their belief as to how to achieve these rights differ.  Isaiah favours the ideas of  W.E.B. Dubois, while Angel believes in Booker T. Washington's ideas. The two men, born in the middle of the nineteenth century became influential leaders in the civil rights movement in the early 20th century. However, they were at odds as to how to achieve equal rights for Black Americans. Washington felt that economic independence was key to Black rights while Dubois championed education and civil rights activism. Dubois' book, The Souls of Black Folks was critical of Washington's approach. Dubois eventually was involved in the formation of the NAACP  in 1909 while Washington's influence waned. He died in 1915. 

Both Isaiah and Angel struggle with their separate beliefs as to how Black Americans can achieve full civil rights. They debate the ideas of W.E.B Dubois and Booker T. Washington. While discussing why a man would return to bondage and slavery at Miss Ferris' over dinner, their teacher explains what the Black community of Greenwood understand compared to Blacks living in the rest of America and what it means to white America.
"We all get one life to live. One chance to make something beautiful of ourselves or to not, that's what we know to be true here in Greenwood. That's the difference between us and them, nothing else. We are no better on the inside. We simply know a Black life can be transformed from that of servitude to that of unmatched intelligence, resourcefulness, creativity, triumph...It's the immaterial knowledge that we, Black people, can be even better that whites if we want to be. And furthermore, much to their dismay, we don't need them to survive. Everyone should possess this knowledge, but the men who stayed in bondage didn't."

Angel of Greenwood is a remarkable novel, well-written, and offering plenty of themes and ideas to further delve into. The tragedy of the Tulsa massacre forms the climax of the novel. With the centenary of the massacre having just passed, Angel of Greenwood is a timely novel offers readers that opportunity. Pink supplies her readers with a wealth of sources used in the writing of her novel, as a starting point. The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 should be remembered not only for the crime it was, but because as Pink writes, "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..."  Angel of Greenwood does just that.

Book Details:

Angel of Greenwood by Randi Pink
New York: Feiwel and Friends     2021
295 pp.