Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, Race Reparations, and Reconciliation
In the spring of 1921, black Oklahomans seeking economic and political  equality collided with a white society bent on keeping them down. The result was  a devastating attack on the African American quarter of Tulsa called Greenwood,  in which hundreds of buildings were destroyed and unknown numbers of people were  killed. Legal scholar Alfred Brophy pieces together some of the puzzles  surrounding this event, which many Oklahoma officials did their best to hide  from history. Indeed, as he remarks, "Tulsa has denied the tragedy for so long  that it is easy to forget it ever happened." Brophy examines the role of the  police and National Guard in assisting the white attackers, that of the courts  in exonerating them and instead attaching blame to the victims, and that of the  media in whipping up ethnic hostility. He also asks what can be done, so many  years after the fact, to redress past wrongs and "the complete breakdown of the  rule of law," and he concludes that reparations are in order. Students of modern  American history and of civil rights law will find much to ponder in Brophy's  measured account of this shameful episode.--Gregory McNamee