Saturday, March 20, 2021

One of my chapters in RACIAL ENCOUNTERS is on being black in Oklahoma in the first years of statehood. Today SMITHSONIAN "THE TRUTH ABOUT TULSA"

 I have not read it yet, but I see I may quote a sentence or two on hopes that the territory or the new state might be a great place for blacks to settle. The main characters in my chapter are Costners, maybe not blood kin (no M for mullato in the censuses) but family, and there was a surprising degree of affection and concern, early. My story is grim--hopes destroyed, but it's not as grim as the truth about Tulsa. However, I see that RACIAL ENCOUNTERS, if I can publish it chapter by chapter, will be the most timely book I ever wrote. I have finished the longish chapter on Albion Tourgee, the writer, and a McGehee cousin who devoted a year or two to voting amnesty to the KKK in North Carolina. Listen to that Senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, to hear a vulgar version of my elegant cousin's elegantly racist language.

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