New book chronicles one family’s journey during Tulsa Race Massacre

When the Goodwin family moved to Greenwood, a growing Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1914, it had all the makings of becoming a thriving center of Black life.

However, seven years later, in 1921, Ed Goodwin, then a teenager, had to hide in a bathtub as a White mob took over his neighborhood, murdering as many as 300 people in a 35-block radius during what is known as the Tulsa Race Massacre.

A new book, “Built from the Fire” by journalist Victor Luckerson (Random House), tells the multigenerational saga of the Goodwin family who lived in Tulsa’s Greenwood District—also known as “Black Wall Street”—that seemingly produced so much envy among their White neighbors that one of the most brutal acts of racial violence in U.S. history occurred there. 

The Goodwins survived the massacre, as well as urban renewal and gentrification in the years that followed. Luckerson recently talked to the MSR about “Built from the Fire,” his first book, which will be released on May 23.

Luckerson is based in Tulsa, where he manages an email newsletter about underexplored aspects of Black history called Run It Back. His former work includes a national award for his reporting on the 1923 Rosewood Massacre for Time Magazine when Luckerson was a business reporter and a former staff writer at The Ringer.

“I was living in Atlanta in 2017,” recalled Luckerson. He had heard about Black Wall Street, “so I asked a friend, ‘Have you ever heard of Black Wall Street?’ We were both 27 at that time,” said Luckerson.

The conversation inspired him to research what happened in Tulsa over a century ago. “Built from the Fire” chronicles history through the experiences of one family.

“The main reason is because they’re [the Goodwin family] the ones who sit in that neighborhood and on that block the entire time,” explained Luckerson.  

A Goodwin descendant shared family history and artifacts with him, and his research unearthed evidence of a once-thriving Black community. “I realized that through that family,” said Luckerson, “I get to show every different role you can play to represent your community. That really started with an interview with Regina [Goodwin].”

“I decided that I really wanted to be able to tell a story about Black people that wasn’t just about Black history,” continued Luckerson. “I wanted to focus on not just the race massacre for what it was,” but also how Greenwood survived afterwards. “I learned a lot of really interesting stories about night life and the numbers game in Greenwood” among other aspects of life there throughout the decades.”

Writing his book, Luckerson said was “kind of like a practicum and it felt like getting a doctoral degree for me. Diving into what happened in Tulsa, I learned so much about the mechanics of how [Black communities] nationwide were decimated by federal and state policy. 

“I think portraying Black life in all of its shades is sort of what’s most interesting and compelling to me,” said Luckerson. “Hopefully it will be [for] readers as well when they get to walk through the history.”

“Built from the Fire” by Victor Luckerson can be purchased on Random House or Amazon.