The Burning Quotes

“If the dedication of Mount Zion had been a hint of heaven, that morning was surely a taste of hell.”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“Well, sit down next to me on this porch swing,” Seymour Williams said. “And we’ll tell you about something that never happened.”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“So they would attack a church, too. Mann squeezed off a few final shots at the whites across Greenwood Avenue and followed the boy down the back stairs, then out the door for the half-mile sprint to Black Tulsa’s Alamo.”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“So black men swung by their necks by the dozens, murdered again and again for sex crimes almost always more imagined than real.”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“The white man’s guilt further added to his rage.”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“white men never hesitated to find their pleasure with Negro women. Before the Civil War, Southern slave owners kept their white women on pedestals, hidden away from the slaves; they made those women icons to white purity and the Southern way of life. But such veneration came with a cost. Women on pedestals tended to be frosty in bed, so the white man had his way with the Negro women and girls. Southern white boys crossed the threshold into manhood with a romp with a woman slave, who refused at the risk of a whipping, or worse. Even the white overseer could help himself whenever the urge arose, and it arose often, and all those mulatto babies were the result. But then the Union triumphed and the slaves were freed. Mingled with the Southern white man’s fury at the destruction of his way of life was this fear: what sort of retribution might the “black buck” now exact on white women? Negro men were now free to do to the white men’s beloved wives and daughters what the white men had done to the Negro women. Great vigilance was required to prevent such abominations. After all, how many rapes began with just a smile?”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“historian John Hope Franklin (a native of Tulsa, as it turned out) or his book From Slavery to Freedom (McGraw Hill, 1994). At Ross’s suggestion, Franklin’s book became the launching point for my crash course into black history, and I’m now of the opinion that it should be taught in every American high school. Until reading Franklin’s book, I was only vaguely aware of the horrors of slavery. I was almost completely ignorant of the terror and hardship that came with emancipation—the murderous rides of the original Ku Klux Klan; the reign of Jim Crow; thousands of lynchings; racial hatreds that were not only tolerated, but widely condoned and endorsed at”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921