The Ground Breaking

2021 National Book Award Longlist 2022 Carnegie Medal Nonfiction Longlist One of The New York Times’ ΓÇ£11 New Books We Recommend This WeekΓÇ¥ | One of Oprah Daily’s ΓÇ£20 of the Best Books to Pick Up This MayΓÇ¥ | One of The Oklahoman’s ΓÇ£15 Books to Help You Learn About the Tulsa Race Massacre as the 100-Year Anniversary ApproachesΓÇ¥ |A The Week book of the week As seen in documentaries on the History Channel,CNNand Lebron JamesΓÇÖs SpringHill Productions And then they were gone. More than one thousand homes and businesses. Restaurants and movie theaterschurches and doctorsΓÇÖ officesa hospitala public librarya post office. Lootedburnedand bombed from the air. Over the course of less than twenty-four hours in the spring of 1921TulsaΓÇÖs infamous ΓÇ£Black Wall StreetΓÇ¥ was wiped off the mapΓÇöand erased from the history books. Official records were disappearedresearchers were threatenedand the worst single incident of racial violence in American history was kept hidden for more than fifty years. But there were some secrets that would not die. A riveting and essential new bookThe Ground Breaking not only tells the long-suppressed story of the notorious Tulsa race massacre. It also unearths the lost history of how the massacre was covered upand of the courageous individuals who fought to keep the story alive. Most importantit recounts the ongoing archaeological saga and the search for the unmarked graves of the victims of the massacreand of the fight to win restitution for the survivors and their families. Both a forgotten chronicle from the nationΓÇÖs past and a story ripped from todayΓÇÖs headlinesThe Ground Breaking is a page-turning reflection on how weas Americansmust wrestle with the parts of our history that have been buried for far too long.