This book was not what I expected at all, but in the best way possible. I anticipated a historically rich and detailed account of the Tulsa Massacre. Not to say that this book doesn't recount some of the horrific details of that event, but it is also so much more. Other reviewers have done the book much more justice than I could hope to do. This book is part history lesson, part reassessment of the prevailing narratives about Tulsa and the massacre that occurred there, and part memoir of how systemic racism has harmed a black man as he's journeyed through life. It is a story about how, even as while people begin to accept history as it occurred, they still cannot set aside their own ego to come to terms with the atrocities that were committed by their ancestors. There is still the need to cater to white feelings instead of truly prioritizing those who live with the ramifications of slavery and racism in this country. This book is not easy to read at times, but that's what makes it so much more important. Important and honest things are often difficult to hear. And that's the point.

From its title, Requiem for the Massacre makes it clear that it will be an emotional unpacking of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. R. J. Young presents a history of the Tulsa Race Massacre, a memoir of his and his family's life and of contemporary life in Tulsa. It is impossible to separate history form the present day, and by detailing the history and lack of justice for the losses and lack of reparations as continued evidence of America's white supremacist culture.

Young begins the book by detailing the chain of events that began on May 31, 1921, culminating with loss of life and the destruction of more than 35 square blocks. Young then shares his life story. Growing up the child of military parents and a civil rights activist grandmother. After living several other places, Young's family moved to Tulsa where he currently lives. He is a very open an honest narrator, sharing the pivotal moments of his life and his struggles with mental health.

As a work focused on the Massacre, it builds on the work of others, and Young is very clear on naming his sources. He also integrates them very well, showing how the narratives have always been largely controlled by white people who never present themselves as active participants or having benefited from the massacre, and how, a century later the story is no different.

The particular section I find myself reflecting on is when Young explores some of the popular perceptions of the Tulsa Race Massacre. In particular who gave it the name the "Black Wall Street?' Young also continually looks at the quotes or figures portrayed in public life in Tulsa and questions their placement or attribution. How much of it is determined by popularity or familiarity? Who are the intended audience? Why was it an HBO TV show written by white men, based on a book by a white man that finally seems to have brought this event to public prominence?

A powerful, moving exploration of being Black in an America built on slavery, focused on the place of one of America's worst racial acts of terrorism.

While the primary focus of RJ Young's book is the Tulsa Race Massacre, its history, its reverberations in modern-day Tulsa Oklahoma, and his family history, the text is so much more.

The first time I heard of the Tulsa Race Massacre was from the first episode of the television adaptation of HBO's Watchmen (2019), starring Regina King. I remember feeling ashamed that I'd never been taught such a historically significant and tragic event and its aftermath. While I'm not American, the fact remains that Black American history has not been sufficiently taught in schools in several jurisdictions. Several white and other non-Black Americans expressed dismay at never having been aware of the Massacre prior to that episode. Young, author of 'Requiem for the Massacre,' discusses this toward the end of his book, as well as Matt Ruff's 2016 novel 'Lovecraft Country' and how the Tulsa Massacre forms the backbone of much of that novel. The showrunner, Damon Lindelof, had never been to Tulsa prior to filming the sequence in 'Watchmen' and described at a public event that he had not himself heard of the Massacre until reading a piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates in 'The Atlantic' called 'The Case for Reparations.' I'm not going to spoil the rest of that section, because it's fascinating, illuminating, painful, and makes clear that although Regina King had been trying to launch projects off the ground to feature the Massacre, a white man needed to say he wanted to make the story for HBO to greenlight it.

Since then, I have educated myself on the Tulsa Race Massacre and other massacres, other significant historical events that have been buried by textbooks who erase them, media who underreport and still try to dampen their impact, and of course, in spite of the horrendous streak of white supremacist denial that permeates through more people like its own pandemic in addition to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Young uses an evocative style to bring readers into the background of how things began, progressed, and combusted. He tells the story of Ottaway W. Gurley, the richest and most powerful Black man in Tulsa, who most readers have likely not heard of. He moved his family to Oklahoma for better opportunities and with other members of a burgeoning Black community, worked together to form a city within the city, Black-owned and operated businesses, as well as offices for local doctors and lawyers. This district came to be known as Greenwood.

Young describes the lead-up to a Black shoe-shiner, Rowland, who needed to use the restroom at a Drexel's top floor. A white girl, Sarah Page, operated the elevator. Someone heard a white girl scream, saw Rowland running away, and called the police. Rowland was arrested, Page did not press charges, but still, white mob violence sprang from this incident. Young chronicles the sensationalized newspaper reports that incited anger in white residents, who called the police station where Rowland was being detained and told them that they were going to lynch him. The police commissioner then asked that Rowland be moved to Tulsa County Jail, where the sherriff called on deputies to fortify the jail, on the fifth floor of a county courthouse.

Young also features testimonials from survivors of the Massacre and what they experienced, including people who were children at the time. In excruciating but necessary detail, Young chronicles the violence and terror that white mobs perpetrated during the Massacre, and what they did to Black families. White Tulsans "burned down Frissell Memorial Hospital and the Colored Library Branch...[they] took books from the library and burned them in the street."

He relays how White Tulsans looted Black homes and styole furniture, jewelry, and other things while burning Black family bibles. "...gangs of white Tulsa men cornered Black couples and Black families, killed Black fathers and husbands, separated Black wives and mothers from their children and raped them behind a brick wall just close enough so that those children could hear their mothers' violent screams."

Greenwood became a sea of ashes, piles of bricks, and destruction. Nearly the entire population of Black Tulsans who had not been killed or escaped had been detained at the fairgrounds.

It is infuriating and unacceptable that an all-white jury assembled less than a month after the Massacre predictably stated that they blamed Black men for starting the riots. They completely absolved any white residents of any wrong-doing. Neither the "World" nor the "Tribune" acknowledged the Massacre or its anniversary for thirty years. 30 YEARS.

To this day, Tulsa has not done anything to offer reparations to descendents of Black Tulsans impacted by this massacre. A few are trying to force the state to financially atone for its barbarism. Nonetheless, "[i]nstitutional racism and housing discrimination have made certain that Black Tulsans mostly live in the section of the city known as North Tulsa, and only in North Tulsa." A repeat of the blatant redlining, housing discrimination, and pushing out of Black communities to segregated enclaves.

Young also relays his own family history and experiences of direct as well as institutional racism. One of his teachers once accused Young of dressing up "like the kids who shot up Columbine," for which he was called into the principal's office. This was May 1999, a month after the Columbine Massacre. School officials were tasked with searching Young's locker for guns "or anything else that might lead someone to believe that I was going to commit such a heinous and horrible act." The intergenerational trauma that Young carries, not only from being the descendent of enslaved people, but also of the Tulsa Massacre, bleeds through his writing while also being a testament to his bravery and resilience.

At a different school and through a more benevolent teacher, Young discovered a book called 'Death of a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921' by Scott Elsworth. Reading this slim volume changed his life.

He also discusses the presidential nightmare of 2016 and the MAGA rallies in Tulsa, all of the political turmoil, protests, and Black Lives Matter.

A combination of personal memoir and history, 'Requiem for the Massacre' is a crucial text that needs to be taught in schools and colleges, highlighted, talked about, and revered as a testament not just to Black Wall Street, but a vital history that we must never forget. Recommended for fans of Kiese Laymon and Roxane Gay.

"Requiem for the Massacre" is part narrative, part autobiography, something I did not expect it to be.

Author RJ Young begins the book with an account of the 1921 Tulsa Masscre, in which the prosperous African-American community of Greenwood in Northern Tulsa, Oklahoma was destroyed due to a false accusation of assault. The victim: a white woman; the accused: a black man. But this alleged assault was not the true reason for the death and destruction wreaked on Greenwood. The real crime: that this community of African-Americans had the nerve to be thriving without the input of white Tulsans.

The book then segues into the autobiographical phase, in which author RJ Young details his awakening of what it is to be Black in America. His various experiences demonstrate to the reader his struggle to deal with how he is viewed and how he views himself in America's racial landscape.

Finally, Young talks about the various events and exhibits regarding the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre. The overall point he makes in this part of the book: that the narrative about the massacre has been and continues to be controlled by white Tulsans. For 75 years after the massacre occurred, all details of it were scrubbed from history at large. So many people had no idea it happened, unless it was something they knew through family lore or through academic study on a collegiate level. In more recent years, as it has become more widely known, the narrative has gone from complete silence to focusing on the myth of Greenwood being America's Black Wall Street rather than on the horrific death and destruction that happened. Incidentally, the phrase 'Black Wall Street' was coined by Booker T. Washington, the poster child of appeasing white people.

RJ Young makes some salient points in this book I agree with. They can all be boiled down to one thing: Black people are still, in 2022, fighting to be seen and treated as equal to white people. This fight has lasted for 403 years. 403!!! It may seem like Young belabors this overall point in the book, but it's a point that bears repeating. As I said initially, this book is not what I expected, but I am glad to have read it. It is a definite must-read.