Erica's Reviews > The Burning

Pull yourself up by boot straps, work hard - that’s all it takes to be successful. - this is what the American Dream is. Yet, when Black Tulsans did just that from the early
1900s to 1921- racist white Americans couldn’t stand to see their success and burned it all down - killing nearly 300 people in the process. A massacre that started, as so many acts of racially motivated terrorist attacks did at that time, because a white woman falsely accused a Black man of attacking her. When I think about how I had never even HEARD of the Tulsa Massacre until I saw it on HBO’s The Watchman (and had to Google if it had in fact actually happened), I am both unsurprised and horrified at the lengths that white Tulsans must have gone to in order to cover up their act of terrorism. The most vicious and violent attacks on America, we’ve always been taught were perpetrated by outsiders - others - but in reality - THIS attack, by white Americans, is more brutal and more depraved than the acts of violence and destruction seen in times of war. As we approach the 100 year anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre in June 1, it is still an area of history that goes untaught, and we continue to see Black lives murdered at the hands of racist white Americans. Every American history class needs to teach about this moment in history, students need to understand that white supremacy isn’t something that can be ignored any longer.