The Ground Breaking
An American City and Its Search for Justice
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The Ground Breaking
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Narrated by:
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Adenrele Ojo
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Written by:
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Scott Ellsworth
About this listen
Carnegie Medal, 2022
National Book Award, 2021
One of The New York Times' “11 New Books We Recommend This Week” | One of Oprah Daily's “20 of the Best Books to Pick Up This May” | One of The Oklahoman's “15 Books to Help You Learn About the Tulsa Race Massacre as the 100-Year Anniversary Approaches” | A The Week book of the week
As seen in documentaries on the History Channel, CNN, and Lebron James’s SpringHill Productions
And then they were gone.
More than 1,000 homes and businesses. Restaurants and movie theaters, churches and doctors’ offices, a hospital, a public library, a post office. Looted, burned, and bombed from the air.
Over the course of less than 24 hours in the spring of 1921, Tulsa’s infamous “Black Wall Street” was wiped off the map - and erased from the history books. Official records were disappeared, researchers were threatened, and the worst single incident of racial violence in American history was kept hidden for more than 50 years. But there were some secrets that would not die.
A riveting and essential new book, The Ground Breaking not only tells the long-suppressed story of the notorious Tulsa race massacre. It also unearths the lost history of how the massacre was covered up, and of the courageous individuals who fought to keep the story alive. Most important, it recounts the ongoing archaeological saga and the search for the unmarked graves of the victims of the massacre, and of the fight to win restitution for the survivors and their families.
Both a forgotten chronicle from the nation’s past and a story ripped from today’s headlines, The Ground Breaking is a pause-resister reflection on how we, as Americans, must wrestle with the parts of our history that have been buried for far too long.
©2021 Scott Ellsworth (P)2021 Penguin AudioWhat the critics say
Carnegie Medal, 2022
National Book Award, 2021
“A moving and humane portrait of the massacre...The Ground Breaking sends a powerful message at this 100th anniversary: that reconciliation is possible only when we directly confront the truth of a painful past and take concrete steps to redress it.” (The Washington Post)
“The Ground Breaking documents Ellsworth’s dogged pursuit to excavate the details of what occurred on those days 100 years ago, since facts about what transpired were intentionally suppressed for decades.... By weaving in his personal history and conversations with Tulsa survivors and other natives, Ellsworth combines his gift for storytelling with an historian's dogged persistence to not only track the latest information on the existence and locations of those mass graves, but to offer essential insights as to why the Tulsa Race Massacres are emblematic of why American racial inequality persists and how we need to reckon with it so we can begin to seek true reconciliation.... Ellsworth, whose previous book on the massacre, published in 1982, was entitled Death In A Promised Land, with his latest masterful work of history, illuminates the hard, never-finished work of unlearning racism and nurturing truth. He also prompts us to question how many other American stories and voices remain buried, waiting for dedicated historians with Ellsworth's persistence and passion to uncover them.” (OprahDaily.com)
“A skillful narrative of excavating the truth about the Tulsa race massacre...candid and self-aware.... Part of what makes this book so riveting is Ellsworth’s skillful narration, his impeccable sense for when to reveal a piece of information and when to hold something back.” (The New York Times)