Caleb Gayle

Magic City Books is proud to welcome Tulsa native, Caleb Gayle for an event celebrating the paperback release of We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power and his book for young readers, What Was the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 on Thursday August 24 at 7:00 pm in the Algonquin Room at Magic City Books.

In We Refuse to Forget, award-winning journalist Caleb Gayle tells the extraordinary story of the Creek Nation, a Native tribe that two centuries ago both owned slaves and accepted Black people as full citizens. Thanks to the efforts of Creek leaders like Cow Tom, a Black Creek citizen who rose to become chief, the U.S. government recognized Creek citizenship in 1866 for its Black members. Yet this equality was shredded in the 1970s when tribal leaders revoked the citizenship of Black Creeks, even those who could trace their history back generations–even to Cow Tom himself.

We Refuse to Forget is an eye-opening account that challenges our preconceptions of identity as it shines new light on the long shadows of white supremacy and marginalization that continue to hamper progress for Black Americans.

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With over 250 titles, Penguin’s Who Was?, What Was?, Where Is?, and What Is the Story Of? books tell the incredible stories of trailblazers, legends, innovators, cool places, and important events.

Caleb Gayle outlines how envy and racism led to the tragic destruction of the thriving Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma in this new nonfiction book for young readers.

A book signing will follow the program with Caleb Gayle. Copies of We Refuse to Forget and What Was the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 are available now at Magic City Books or you can order online at the links below.

https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/we-refuse-to-forget/1372

https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/what-was-the-tulsa-race-massacre-of-1921-/1373

Caleb Gayle is an award-winning journalist who writes about race and identity. A professor at Northeastern University, he is a fellow at New America, PEN America, Harvard Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies, and a visiting scholar at New York University. Gayle’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Guernica, and other publications. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Gayle is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, the University of Oxford, and has an MBA and a master’s in public policy, both from Harvard University. He lives in Boston.