Louisiana State University Press Web Site, Aug., 2001
Summary
Historian and journalist Scott Ellsworth and his landmark study, Death in a Promised Land, published by LSU
Press in 1982, have been featured widely by the media in the past year. Newspaper, magazine, and television reporters--including
those from the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Civilization,
The Economist, the BBC, CBS's Sixty Minutes II, The History Channel, and more--are interviewing Ellsworth and hailing
Death in a Promised Land as the definitive work on the Tulsa race riot of 1921. The reason for the deluge of attention
for the book is that the riot--possibly the worst incidence of racial violence in American history and hushed up
for more than half a century--is undergoing new investigation by the State of Oklahoma. An eleven-member Tulsa Race
Riot Commission, created by the Oklahoma Legislature in 1997, is trying to determine, among other things, how many
people really were killed (some estimate it may be almost ten times the official count of thirty-five) and whether
survivors are entitled to reparations. The commission's report is expected to be released in 2000.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Prelude: In the Promised Land
p. 1
Boom Cities
p. 8
Race Relations and Local Violence
p. 17
Race Riot
p. 45
Law, Order, and the Politics of Relief
p. 71
The Segregation of Memory
p. 98
Epilogue: Notes on the Subsequent History of "Deep Greenwood"
p. 108
Appendix I
p. 113
Appendix II
p. 115
Notes
p. 119
Essay on Sources
p. 139
Acknowledgments
p. 151
Index
p. 155
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.
