Tulsa Speaks: A City Council, Reparations, and Race in America Today - Hardcover

by Kristal Brent Zook (Author)

In 2021, the international media descended upon Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the centennial commemoration of the May 31-June 1, 1921, massacre in which a white mob killed more than three hundred African American residents, burned homes and businesses, and decimated a thriving town once referred to as "Black Wall Street."

Tulsa Speaks is about the ongoing work of the Tulsa City Council, both before the Centennial and afterward, when the cameras were no longer trained on the city. It dives deep into the interpersonal dynamics among the nine councilors, exploring the continuing fight for reparations and racial justice and the long-running efforts of councilor, Vanessa Hall-Harper of District 1, to bring repair to Greenwood.

Tulsa, like many municipal bodies across the country, serves as a hopeful sign of what we might become, as Americans and as a microcosm of race relations in America today.

Author Biography

KRISTAL BRENT ZOOK is an award-winning journalist and professor of journalism at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York, and author of four previous books, including The Girl in the Yellow Poncho. She is a former contributor to The Washington Post and ESSENCE magazine, and her work on race, women, culture, and social justice has appeared in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Life, and The Guardian, among other outlets.