- This event has passed.
Virtual Event – Scott Ellsworth
May 18, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Magic City Books proudly welcomes native Tulsan Scott Ellsworth for a virtual book launch event in celebration of his new book, THE GROUND BREAKING: AN AMERICAN CITY AND ITS SEARCH FOR JUSTICE.
The Ground Breaking is a chronicle of not only the horrific events of 1921 but also of the decades that were spent ignoring and outright denying the massacre that took place in Greenwood on May 31 and June 1, 1921. Ellsworth served as the chief historian on the Tulsa Race Riot Commission (1999-2000) and is chair of the committee leading the effort to identify the unmarked graves of victims of the 1921 riot for the upcoming 2021 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial.
Mr. Ellsworth will be in conversation with Wall Street Journal Reporter, Lee Hawkins.
Tickets for this event are on sale now. Each ticket includes one (1) copy of The Ground Breaking by Scott Ellsworth and one (1) link to the virtual event, hosted as a private Zoom event on Tuesday May 18, 2021 at 7:00 pm CDT.
Ticket purchasers have the option to have their book shipped to them or to pick up their book in person at Magic City Books. If you choose to have the book shipped, please be sure to enter your shipping address at checkout.
Purchase Your Ticket Here
The Ground Breaking is being released on May 18, shipping via USPS will begin that day and all tracking information will be sent from stamps.com. Please be understanding of potential shipping delays.
No International Shipping Available
The link to the virtual event will be sent to the email address used to purchase your ticket on Monday, May 17. Be sure to double check your information at check out, please use an email that you regularly check and make sure that you enter your complete shipping address if having your book shipped.
About The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice
More than one-thousand homes and businesses. Restaurants and movie theaters, churches and doctors’ offices, a hospital, a public library, a post office. Looted, burned, and bombed from the air.
Over the course of less than twenty-four hours in the spring of 1921, Tulsa’s infamous “Black Wall Street” was wiped off the map–and erased from the history books. Official records were disappeared, researchers were threatened, and the worst single incident of racial violence in American history was kept hidden for more than fifty years. But there were some secrets that would not die.
A riveting and essential new book, The Ground Breaking not only tells the long-suppressed story of the notorious Tulsa Race Massacre. It also unearths the lost history of how the massacre was covered up, and of the courageous individuals who fought to keep the story alive. Most importantly, it recounts the ongoing archaeological saga and the search for the unmarked graves of the victims of the massacre, and of the fight to win restitution for the survivors and their families.
Both a forgotten chronicle from the nation’s past, and a story ripped from today’s headlines, The Ground Breaking is a page-turning reflection on how we, as Americans, must wrestle with the parts of our history that have been buried for far too long.
Scott Ellsworth is the New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Game, winner of the 2016 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. He has written about American history for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Formerly a historian at the Smithsonian Institution, he is also the author of The World Beneath Their Feet and Death in a Promised Land, his groundbreaking account of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Scott lives in Ann Arbor, where he teaches in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.
Lee Hawkins is a Reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covers education and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on children and families. He is also the author of the forthcoming book NOBODY’S SLAVE: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free (HarperCollins, 2021). Before joining the WSJ’s Education Bureau in 2020, he was a corporate and general assignment reporter, working across the print, video and television platforms. He is a four-time winner of the National Association of Black Journalist’s “Salute to Excellence” Award and a recipient of the Logan Nonfiction Fellowship and the 2020 Adam Clayton Powell Reporting Award from the New York Association of Black Journalists.
