Riot and Remembrance

Lynch mobs were a form of law enforcement , not a Klan organization (63 ) and they eliminated far more whites than blacks , something the author is forced to admit (54 . The author goes a bit overboard with the level of journalistic detail , but when one is roughly halfway through the book , one is convinced that the city was on edge , that this edge ' was bi-racial and that the boom ' of Tulsa at the turn of the century brought good workers , but also criminal elements that the natives of the area wanted returned to their

place of origin . The alleged rape ' on the elevator was just one more event , but it represented the straw that broke the camel 's back

Even more , the entire question , dealt with on page 139-140 , that white capitalists started the riot in to buy up burnt out properties is given credence , but never developed . If this is even partially true (and it seems to be given some of his evidence ) then the riot was not racial at all , but purely financial and the remainder of the book is of no value . If this thesis is true (and the author quotes several researchers who are convinced that it is ) then Tulsan race relations are something manipulated by a handful of banks for financial gain , and hence , the average white or black is innocent . Hence , this thesis is never developed , but tantalizingly dangled in our faces , almost as a joke

The problem with the author 's take on the riot is that he takes what he himself eloquently describes as a culture of violence and , without theoretical reason , abstracts race ' from it . This is a clumsy way of taking a complex situation and making it simple (e .g . 163-164 . He wants this to be about white guilt , and will...