• The Ground Breaking by Scott Ellsworth *** (of 4)

    Scott Ellsworth answers a question I’ve pondered ever since I first learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. How come I had never heard of it before? Beginning the day after the flames died out, white Tulsans did everything they could to bury the evidence. Police gathered up photographs and hid them. Government investigations and after-action reports from the National Guard vanished. Bodies of the dead were buried in unmarked mass graves. Newspaper accounts were cut and taken out of library archives. By tacit agreement, white Tulsans refused to discuss it. Black survivors, like Holocaust survivors after them, were too traumatized to tell their children.

    Before the 9/11 attacks, the Tulsa race massacre of African Americans by a vigilante white mob was the worst attack on Americans in the country’s history (only if you overlook the decimation of Native American populations.)

    Ellsworth, is a white, very professional historian, opens the book with an impartial account of events based on credible evidence. His description is in contrast to white apologists who insist that deaths were minimal and roughly equal between Blacks and whites. Angry African Americans suggest that the invasion of the Greenwood District of Tusla was a pre-meditated land grab. Ellsworth lays out what can be said with certainty based on surviving testimonies and documents.

    The events were perpetrated by a riled up mob that ran out of control. Think about January 6 and the U.S. Capitol and shudder.

    Much of the book is dedicated to Ellsworth’s tireless search for mass graves of murdered African Americans purportedly dumped right after the riot. For more than two decades, Ellsworth scoured stories and archives, cajoled governments, and sought assistance from archaeologists to help him search and eventually dig through potential locations. Ellsworth is a strong proponent of the idea of paying reparations to the offspring of families whose lives and livelihoods were snuffed out by an unapologetic white Tulsa.

    His contribution was to find the bodies of some of those who had been disappeared so their remains could be returned and reburied with dignity. His other contribution was to write this book.

    The first person was identified on July 12, 2024, following the exhumation of African Americans from a mass grave in Tulsa, Oklahoma. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/tulsa-massacre-oklahoma-mass-grave-cl-daniel-rcna161599

  • The Last Slave Ship by Ben Raines *** (of 4)

    On the face of it, the story of 100 enslaved Africans smuggled into Mobile, Alabama does not feel that significant among the 12.5 million Africans shipped to the New World (10.7 million survived the Middle Passage.) Aside: I am only now figuring out that more than 90% of the people kidnapped, chained below decks, and, if they survived, sold, went into the Caribbean and South America. America’s four million enslaved people were mostly bred (breeding is a term used by slavers) by their owners here.

    The Clotilda was the last ship carrying human cargo to arrive in the United States, running past naval patrol ships into Mobile Bay in 1860. After the south lost the Civil War, many of those transported by the Clotilda settled in Africa Town just outside Mobile. They lived long enough to be interviewed and photographed. They provided firsthand accounts of their lost African families, details of their capture by Dahomian warriors, the life-threatening Middle Passage, and sale to other humans to do animal-like labor. They also recall African customs that persisted inside Africa Town.

    The author, Ben Raines, describes the Clotilda from the days of its inception as a ship bound for Africa in contravention of American law, its scuttling after disgorging its human cargo into the swamps of Alabama, until its rediscovery 2019. The ship’s story brackets the story of its enslaved Africans and their offspring.

    A century of racism haunts Africa Town and its descendents to this day. And yet, The Last Slave Ship grows stronger until its finish, describing a sordid history that somehow still points a way toward recognition and finally, forgiveness.

    Africa Town today. The commerce is gone now, and you see boarded up homes and vacant lots in the neighborhood. Link to NPR story.

  • The Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price *** (of 4)

    Truly, everything you might ever want to know about Vikings and how they ruled with terrible violence is scrutinized. Scandinavia, Western Europe, and the British Isles from roughly 700 – 1,000 CE were all under Viking rule. What makes the book so compelling, however, is the degree to which the author explains the tools of modern archaeology. Long gone are simple descriptions of dates, rulers, eras, and material culture. In the olden days of archaeology, the past was filtered through strongly clouded lenses. Thusly, the Vikings have largely been described by Christian missionaries who were at first overwhelmed by pagan invaders and later rationalized their missionary zeal for conversion by re-imagining Viking perceptions of the world. Price puts on a pair of 21st century lenses.

    To take one example, Viking religion and belief in their gods was understood only in relation to Christianity, while Price argues rather effectively that even the concept of religion is a construct of monotheism. Price cross-references material objects found in archaeological digs, nordic sagas which mostly tell us what Vikings wanted to believe and fossilize about themselves, and a handful of written accounts left by traders, mostly Arab and a few Jewish who ventured north. The result is a description of life that does its best to describe Vikings as they saw themselves and to expand our vision of the past to include women, LGBTQIA, slaves, immigrants, emigrants, mealtime, daily work, child rearing, and so forth.

    Most remarkable is the degree to which the combination of story and artifacts make clear the extent to which even in the first millennia the Vikings were integrated into a global economy. There are Vikings and Viking things in Egypt, Iraq, India, and China. Walrus tusks, for example, and Viking swords are found along the Silk Road. Simultaneously, there are Vikings buried in silk.