Black Birds in the Sky: The Story and Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

A lynching is an extrajudicial public killing of an individual by a mob. In Black history, lynching was a terror technique utilized by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a white supremacist terrorist group, and other violent, white mobs to murder Black Americans accused of crimes, real or imagined. Colbert first references lynching when she describes the 1906 triple lynching of Horace B. Duncan, Fred Coker, and Will Allen in Springfield, Missouri, the town in which Colbert grew up. Lynching plays a central role in Colbert’s historical analysis, as an attempted lynching was at the core of the Tulsa Race Massacre. The mob’s attempt to lynch Dick Rowland for the alleged and unsubstantiated crime of attempting to rape Sarah Page caused the residents of Greenwood to defend Rowland, which then motivated the mob to escalate their violence and massacre the community of Greenwood. Colbert uses the descriptions of lynching to demonstrate the horrors of white mob violence and to illustrate the depths of white supremacy, two factors clearly at play in the Tulsa Race Massacre.

The NAACP, or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is a group that was founded in 1908 following a horrific act of violence that took place in Springfield, Illinois. A group of people, both Black and white, met after the violence ended to discuss ways to end racist violence. Attendees of this meeting included activists W. E. B. DuBois, one of the only Black people on the initial executive board, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell. In its early days, the NAACP published journals that discussed issues facing Black Americans, worked to overturn legislation that unfairly discriminated against Black Americans, and fundraised to support Black American causes. Today, the NAACP still works to advocate for civil rights for all Americans and has over 2,200 active chapters across the United States. In Black Birds in the Sky, Colbert offers a brief history of the genesis of the NAACP after her discussion of the 1908 violence in Springfield, and she also references the help the NAACP gave to the community of Greenwood in the aftermath of the massacre.