Book summary “The Ground Breaking”: summary

Introduction

You often confront historical traumas that powerful institutions attempt to erase from public memory. When official records vanish and communities maintain decades of silence, you face the challenge of uncovering the truth about mass violence and racial injustice.

Scott Ellsworth addresses this problem in The Ground Breaking by investigating the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and the long efforts to find its hidden mass graves. The central thesis of the book is that an exhaustive investigation into the 1921 Tulsa race massacre reveals a decades-long conspiracy of silence and a modern quest to uncover mass graves and secure justice.

The book traces the history from the destruction of Greenwood through the decades of municipal cover-up to archival research, political mobilization, and modern archaeological excavations. You will discover answers to several key questions as you read:

• How did the prosperous district of Greenwood get destroyed in 1921?
• What methods did local authorities use to enforce a conspiracy of silence?
• How did researchers and survivors piece together the hidden history?
• Where do historical records point regarding unmarked burial sites?
• How did modern excavations finally locate mass graves?

1. The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the Destruction of Greenwood

Black Wall Street

In 1921, the Greenwood district of Tulsa was a flourishing, self-sufficient African American community often described as Black Wall Street. You could find Deep Greenwood or Little Africa thriving as a center of commerce and culture.

The district housed over ten thousand residents, multiple churches, schools, a hospital, theaters, hotels, and numerous Black-owned businesses where money circulated repeatedly within the community before leaving.

Entrepreneurs like Elizabeth Sawyer, Dora Wells, and Loula Williams operated successful dressmaking, real estate, and confectionery businesses.

The community supported 10000 residents living in Greenwood in 1921, 14 churches located in Greenwood, and 38 grocery stores, fruit and vegetable stands, and meat markets operating in the district.

The Spark

In May 1921, the prosperous Black district of Greenwood was systematically destroyed by white rioters following a courthouse confrontation.

The massacre was triggered by an alleged encounter between a nineteen-year-old Black shoeshiner and a white elevator operator in May 1921.

Dick Rowland entered the Drexel Building to use a restroom and reportedly caused elevator operator Sarah Page to scream. Although Page did not press charges, Rowland was arrested and placed in the courthouse jail, rapidly sparking lynch talk among white Tulsans.

Nineteen-year-old Dick Rowland was jailed on the top floor of the county courthouse while white crowds gathered outside demanding a lynching.

Unlike previous local law enforcement who actively aided lynchings, Tulsa County Sheriff Willard McCullough mounted a determined defense of the prisoner.

Sheriff McCullough refused to hand Dick Rowland over to the mob, disabled the courthouse elevators, blockaded stairwells, and positioned armed deputies on the roof to protect him.

Sheriff McCullough successfully defended the jail against a growing white mob despite immense pressure and earlier local precedents like the lynching of Roy Belton.

Fifty-four-year-old Sheriff Willard McCullough positioned 6 deputies positioned on the courthouse roof with high-powered rifles.

Armed Defense and Complicity

African American World War I veterans repeatedly mobilized to protect the courthouse and later defended their own community.

Dozens of armed Black veterans twice drove to the courthouse to offer their assistance to the sheriff in defending the jail, which inflamed the white mob and directly precipitated the initial exchange of gunfire.

Seventy-five armed African American men drove in cars and rode on running boards to the courthouse to help defend the prisoner.

Local police forces actively collaborated with the white rioters by distributing weapons and badges.

Instead of suppressing the violence, Tulsa police officers broke into sporting goods stores and pawnshops, handed out firearms and ammunition to the mob, and swore rioters in as special deputies.

White bricklayer Laurel G. Buck was sworn in as a special deputy and told by a police officer to get a gun and target Black residents.

The systematic destruction of Greenwood involved coordinated arson, looting, and aerial bombing from private and commercial aircraft.

White rioters and local participants utilized machine guns, torches, and airplanes dropping incendiary devices or turpentine balls to accelerate the burning of homes, businesses, and churches.

Witnesses such as Mabel Little and W. I. Brown reported that single-engine aircraft dropped incendiary bombs and explosives that caused massive fires and flying debris, with more than a dozen aeroplanes reported participating by witnesses.

2. The Conspiracy of Silence and the Cover-Up

State troops finally arrived from Oklahoma City late in the morning on June 1, declaring martial law at 11:29 a.m., disarming white civilians, and holding thousands of African American residents under armed guard at locations like Convention Hall and the baseball park. J. C. Latimer and Carrie Kinlaw were among the many Black residents beaten, robbed, and forced to march under armed guard to internment centers.

Local officials, newspapers, and white leaders systematically erased the massacre from public view for decades while blaming Black victims.

The Grand Jury Blame

An all-white grand jury impaneled after the disturbance interviewed officials and witnesses and issued a report blaming a group of Black men who went to the courthouse. Indictments were issued against Black Tulsans, but no whites ever served prison time, Sarah Page refused to press charges, and Dick Rowland was exonerated. The grand jury stated that the riot was the direct result of African Americans appearing at the courthouse on May 31, 1921, claiming there was no white mob spirit or talk of lynching.

Mayor T. Evans described the burning of Greenwood as good generalship to target where the trouble began, while Tulsa Tribune editor Richard Lloyd Jones blamed African Americans and labeled Greenwood a cesspool of iniquity.

Erasing History

Recognizing the riot as a public relations nightmare that would hurt business and boosterism, the white establishment enforced a strict conspiracy of silence. National Guard reports vanished from state archives, police and grand jury documents disappeared, photographs became scarce, and local newspapers actively scrubbed mentions from back issues and historical columns. The Tulsa Tribune ran a 'Fifteen Years Ago' column on the 1936 anniversary of the riot, completely omitting the massacre and instead publishing society notes about a senior prom and young socialites.

Instead of fulfilling promises to rebuild Greenwood, the mayor and city government attempted to relocate the Black settlement further north and east by passing a fire ordinance that would have prohibited rebuilding with wood. Mabel Little recalled erecting a small three-room house on Marshall Place and Greenwood without electricity, water, or gas, cooking outdoors with wood. Black Tulsans defied the ordinance and won a court victory when three white judges declared the ordinance illegal.

Academic and Activist Awakenings

Newcomers to Tulsa were warned never to mention the riot to avoid starting another one, and the Tulsa County Courthouse developed a coded legal language where 'died on or around June 1st, 1921' served as a euphemism for riot victims. Brenda Alford and Maria Brown both grew up or lived in Greenwood without knowing about the massacre until they were adults, as elders swept the tragedy under the rug.

Nancy Feldman encountered severe segregation and sexism before becoming a part-time sociology instructor at the University of Tulsa. When Nancy Feldman asked her white students if they knew about the riot, they denied it, and their parents denied it too, leading the dean to threaten her with firing if she repeated the lesson.

Don Ross participated in the 1964 CORE sit-ins that helped integrate local establishments. Don Ross co-led sit-ins and filed complaints with the Community Relations Commission, eventually using his weekly column in the Oklahoma Eagle to publish a running tutorial on Greenwood's deep secret.

Ed Wheeler found that police records and National Guard after-action reports were deliberately missing, and he was warned with anonymous notes telling him to check under his car hood. Ed Wheeler discovered that military after-action reports, police files, and a list of riot dead had mysteriously vanished from archives before the fiftieth anniversary in 1971.

3. Reconstructing History Through Research and Oral Testimony

Uncovering the hidden truth required pioneering archival methods, city directories, and trust-based oral histories with elderly survivors.

Official records were systematically destroyed or concealed. Gathering first-person accounts from elderly Black survivors who were adults during the 1921 riot was crucial to uncovering the reality of the tragedy.

Spatial Mapping

Historical city directories can be repurposed as spatial maps to reconstruct destroyed urban communities. Old city directories marked African American individuals and businesses with the letter (c).

Cross-referencing addresses with plat maps resurrected the lost commercial and human geography of pre-riot Greenwood. You can map out destroyed businesses using these historical tools.

The author meticulously mapped out pre-riot Greenwood businesses like H. O. Abbot’s print shop and A. S. Newkirk’s photography studio.

The Power of Oral History

Cold-calling elderly Black residents yielded no results. Once W. D. Williams stepped in to vouch for the author and make introductions, doors opened and survivors agreed to be interviewed.

W. D. Williams made phone calls and arranged meetings that allowed the author to interview elderly Greenwood pioneers whose voices had never been recorded before. W. D. Williams, Robert Fairchild, and other Greenwood pioneers shared vital memories about defending their neighborhood and the events of May 31, 1921.

Local institutions and city officials actively suppressed historical trauma by hiding records and denying complicity. Beryl Ford, president of the Tulsa County Historical Society, falsely claimed to the author that there were no white rioters and that the violence was committed by Mexicans and Indians.

Publishing Death in a Promised Land

The publication of a thoroughly researched historical account can shatter decades of silence and shift public consciousness.

Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was published in 1982 with a foreword by John Hope Franklin. It became a catalyst for public acknowledgment despite initial resistance from local white media and figures like Jenkin Lloyd Jones.

Mabel Little confronted the author at a book signing to demand he write an apology for not interviewing her. Newspapers and libraries saw high demand for the book.

4. Political Mobilization and the 75th Anniversary Commission

Major national tragedies can inadvertently bring long-suppressed historical atrocities back into the public eye.

Political pressure from activists like Don Ross and national spotlights led to the creation of the official state riot commission and forensic plans.

Don Ross moved to Gary, Indiana, in 1972 to work as an assistant managing editor at the Gary Post-Tribune, observing Mayor Richard Hatcher's administration before returning to Tulsa to run for the state legislature. Spending 5 years there and seeing Richard Hatcher elected mayor in 1967 shaped his political path. At 41 years old, Don Ross won election to the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

In 1989, Oklahoma became the first US state to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds.

Legislative Milestones

Don Ross approached Bryant Gumbel on the set of NBC's Today show in Oklahoma City to argue that Tulsa's 1921 tragedy was even worse and lacked proper attention. This happened after 168 people were killed in the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing, which included 15 children killed in the America’s Kids day care center.

Ken Levit partnered with Don Ross to push for a memorial and recognition in time for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the massacre.

The Greenwood Monument

A black marble monument reminiscent of the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey was erected outside the Greenwood Cultural Center to list the lost businesses of the riot. The back of the monument listed three hundred businesses lost during the riot. The events marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the massacre on May 31 and June 1, 1996.

Don Ross utilized the media attention from the 75th anniversary to convince Republican Governor Frank Keating and the state legislature to establish the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 in late 1997.

George Monroe told national media audiences how a rioter stepped on his fingers under a bed while his sister covered his mouth before their house was set on fire. George Monroe was five years old in 1921. He later spent forty-seven years in marriage with his wife Martha.

The Forensic Investigation Plan

Clyde Snow, known for identifying Josef Mengele's remains and uncovering mass graves in Argentina and Guatemala, agreed to help the Tulsa commission locate, exhume, and scientifically analyze the riot victims.

5. The Search for Burial Sites and Casualty Records

Funeral home ledgers, Red Cross reports, and cemetery leads pointed investigators toward unmarked graves and mass burial sites.

Red Cross Rebuilding

Following the 1921 massacre, the Greenwood community embarked on a rapid rebuilding effort spearheaded by volunteers and coordinated by the American Red Cross. American Red Cross administrator Maurice Willows conducted the organization's first-ever coordinated disaster response, providing medical care and housing aid while documenting health statistics. More than a dozen hired carpenters and volunteers replaced canvas tents with simple wooden shacks across Greenwood using massive quantities of materials, including 300,000 feet of lumber and 1 ton of nails. Additional supplies included 122 quilts pieced together by African American women, 16,000 feet of screening for windows and doors, 125 rolls of roofing paper, and 41 bundles of shingles. These efforts supported the 10,000 people left homeless by the riot.

The true number of deaths resulting from the Tulsa race massacre remains officially unknown because victims were buried hastily and comprehensive records were suppressed or lost. Contemporary officials and organizations kept casualty counts intentionally low or omitted them entirely due to the chaotic nature of the burials and political sensitivity. Estimates compiled from various historical sources range dramatically from fewer than thirty to upwards of three hundred dead. Maurice Willows noted in his official report that no one knew the actual number of dead, writing that figures were omitted because bodies were rushed to burial without records. Historical counts included 7 whites and 68 Blacks reported dead by the Tulsa Tribune on June 1, 1921, and 85 whites and negroes reported dead by the New York Times. The Tulsa World announced 100 estimated dead, while the Los Angeles Express claimed 175 people were killed. Relief statistics identified 222 families with no father and 87 families with no mother, alongside 1,350 telegrams sent or received relative to riot victims. Later educational materials cited 20 Blacks and 9 whites in a ninth-grade Oklahoma history textbook.

Oaklawn Cemetery Ledgers

A retired local salesman and amateur historian named Dick Warner became the author's primary research partner, utilizing his deep knowledge of Tulsa and interpersonal skills to uncover lost records. Dick Warner used his local connections, archival knowledge, and persuasive personality to gain access to restricted back rooms and dusty account ledgers in funeral homes and civic offices. Warner discovered dusty account ledgers at the Stanley-McCune funeral home containing handwritten billing entries for African American riot victims charged to Tulsa County.

Ledgers from a historic local funeral home proved that multiple African American riot victims had been officially buried in designated graves at Oaklawn Cemetery. While early logbooks and maps for Oaklawn Cemetery were missing, funeral home records documented specific cause-of-death details for riot victims, confirming that most were laid to rest in unmarked graves within the municipal potter's field. A ledger entry for an unidentified Negro listed the cause of death as gunshot wounds from the riot and interment in Oak Lawn Grave #5, charged to Tulsa County for $25.00. The Stanley Funeral Home ledgers contained 17 total entries for riot victims, including 7 entries marked as unidentified Negro, 11 victims who died of gunshot wounds, and 4 victims who died from burns.

NAACP investigator Walter White used his ability to pass as white to investigate lynchings across the South and later documented the Tulsa race massacre. White traveled to dangerous sites of racial violence, posing as a white commercial salesman to gather candid admissions from white participants before crossing racial boundaries to interview Black victims. At 25 years old, he joined the NAACP headquarters in New York after 13 African American men and women were lynched over two weeks in south Georgia. White published an account in The Nation detailing how Salvation Army commander O. T. Johnson fed Black prisoners in leg irons who were assigned to dig 120 individual graves during the first two days.

Cemetery Leads and Family Registration

Oral histories and eyewitness accounts repeatedly pointed to the Newblock Park area along the Arkansas River as a secondary site where bodies of riot victims were dumped or buried. Multiple witnesses over several decades recounted stories of bodies being transported by truck to the river corridor, laid out on sandbars, or inadvertently uncovered during later municipal construction projects. A witness counted 57 corpses on a river sandbar near Newblock, while a 1945 sewage lift pump station project required deep excavation. Jack Britton recalled that as a thirteen-year-old around the end of World War II, workmen digging near Newblock Park encountered human bones which they identified as originating from the race riot.

An elderly woman carrying a distinctive blue cane provided an oral testimony pointing to a specific cluster of trees at the Booker T. Washington Cemetery where community members secretly buried riot victims. According to the account shared with cemetery staff, an African American family used a surviving truck in the days following the violence to transport human remains recovered from Greenwood debris and bury them safely in the Black cemetery. On May 26, 1997, John Irby, a cemetery employee, listened as a mystery woman in her early nineties used her homemade PVC cane to point out a tree-covered area in section three where her grandfather had helped bury riot victims.

The authors organized a family registration project at the historic Booker T. Washington Cemetery to engage descendants and collect further leads regarding hidden riot burials. By setting up an inviting registration tent with cold water and commemorative carnations on Memorial Day, the authors successfully bypassed distrustful cemetery management and connected directly with elderly survivors and descendants. On May 25, 1998, Elwood Lett, who was 7 years old when he experienced the riot, visited the registration area and corroborated the oral tradition that his grandfather had pointed out the exact spot under the trees where victims were buried.

• Set up a tent with a welcome station providing bottled water and seating
• Display a guest book for families to sign and share their history
• Offer cut carnations wrapped in floral tape to visitors

6. The 2020 Excavations and the Discovery of Mass Graves

Resuming the Graves Search

In 2019, Mayor G.T. Bynum formally announced the resumption of the search for the 1921 riot mass graves, utilizing archival materials and accounts from former police officers. Eighteen years had elapsed since the original riot commission search shut down. On April 10, 2019, an email from deputy mayor Amy Brown arrived to set the new effort in motion.

City leadership contacted original researchers and collaborated with the Oklahoma state archaeologist and a Public Oversight Committee of community activists and leaders to locate victims' remains. Researcher Betsy Warner tracked down former Tulsa police officer Bob Patty. He reiterated his decades-old account of being shown a box of photographs by Sergeant Cotton depicting riot victims being buried in a trench.

The Oaklawn Excavations

The 2020 excavation at Oaklawn Cemetery marked the first time an American government actively set out to locate the remains of victims of domestic racial violence. While accidental discoveries of historical boneyards occur during construction, the Tulsa dig was an unprecedented state-sanctioned archaeological investigation into racial violence victims.

Decades later, renewed municipal commitments led to groundbreaking archaeological excavations that successfully uncovered mass graves at Oaklawn Cemetery.

Led by state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck, archaeologists and city crews began excavating the Sexton's Site at Oaklawn Cemetery on July 13, 2020. Excavation started at 11:17 a.m. on Monday, July 13, 2020. Initial exploratory trenching at the Sexton's Site yielded mixed fill dirt and artifacts rather than mass graves. Despite encouraging ground-penetrating radar anomalies and cemetery sexton oral traditions, extensive trenching revealed heavily disturbed soils, construction fill, and modern debris rather than human burials. Trench B grew to more than forty feet in length and six feet in width. The excavation reached a depth of nearly fourteen feet, but produced zero evidence of individual or mass graves, concluding the first phase of excavation without finding victims.

Discovering the Twelve Coffins

The second excavation at Oaklawn Cemetery successfully uncovered a mass grave containing twelve simple pine coffins laid side by side. The second phase of excavation at Oaklawn began on October 20, 2020. After initial ground-penetrating radar data proved unreliable and a single burial yielded fragile, non-massacre remains, archaeologists opened the Unit 12 and 13 trench.

The team identified twelve side-by-side coffins with steps cut into the earth, confirming the presence of a mass burial site. On October 21, 2020, archaeologist Lee Bement and his team uncovered the outlines of twelve coffins laid side by side in a trench at Oaklawn Cemetery. The trench at Unit 12 and 13 measured approximately 6 feet deep and 6 feet wide.

Field archaeologists utilize simple physical tests to make preliminary distinctions between bone fragments and stone. Geoarchaeologists apply practical field heuristics, such as tongue adhesion, to quickly assess whether an excavated flake is stone or bone. Geoarchaeologist Deb Green explained to the author that placing a dull light gray flake against the tongue will reveal if it is bone because it sticks.

• Place the small flake in your mouth
• Check if it sticks to your tongue to determine if it is bone

10 Key Ideas

1. In 1921, the Greenwood district of Tulsa was a flourishing, self-sufficient African American community often described as Black Wall Street.
2. In May 1921, the prosperous Black district of Greenwood was systematically destroyed by white rioters following a courthouse confrontation.
3. Local officials, newspapers, and white leaders systematically erased the massacre from public view for decades while blaming Black victims.
4. Uncovering the hidden truth required pioneering archival methods, city directories, and trust-based oral histories with elderly survivors.
5. Political pressure from activists like Don Ross and national spotlights led to the creation of the official state riot commission and forensic plans.
6. Funeral home ledgers, Red Cross reports, and cemetery leads pointed investigators toward unmarked graves and mass burial sites.
7. The true number of deaths resulting from the Tulsa race massacre remains officially unknown because victims were buried hastily and comprehensive records were suppressed or lost.
8. Ledgers from a historic local funeral home proved that multiple African American riot victims had been officially buried in designated graves at Oaklawn Cemetery.
9. Decades later, renewed municipal commitments led to groundbreaking archaeological excavations that successfully uncovered mass graves at Oaklawn Cemetery.
10. The second excavation at Oaklawn Cemetery successfully uncovered a mass grave containing twelve simple pine coffins laid side by side.