A Scheme to Forget, a Demand to Remember: The Century-Long Battle Over the Memory of the Tulsa Race Massacre

Victor Luckerson

Journalist and Author

Victor Luckerson is a journalist and author who works to bring neglected black history to light. A native of Montgomery, Alabama, Victor attended the University of Alabama, studying journalism and history. There he served as the second-ever black editor-in-chief of the school’s campus newspaper, The Crimson White. Under Victor’s leadership, the newspaper covered issues ranging from entrenched racism in the Greek system to corrupt politics in student government. The most challenging assignment was grappling with the devastating tornado that ravaged the city of Tuscaloosa and a wide swath of the South on April 27, 2011. It was the first time he and many of my friends were forced to make sense of a tragedy.  

After college Victor worked for seven years as a technology and business reporter, first at Time magazine and later at the media startup The Ringer. He covered how the ascendant tech giants were transforming both physical and digital spaces, from Airbnb gentrifying neighborhoods to Facebook warping social discourse through the creation of the Like button. But Victor never really loved writing about corporations; he preferred writing about real people. In particular he was always looking for more chances to tell black people’s stories. In 2018, Victor wrote a feature story for The Ringer about Tulsa’s historic Greenwood District (also known as “Black Wall Street”) and the 1921 race massacre that left the neighborhood in ruins. He soon realized that a single article barely scratched the surface of all that had transpired in Greenwood over its long history. In 2019, Victor quit his job at The Ringer and moved to Tulsa to pursue a nonfiction book project about Greenwood, chronicling the neighborhood’s story from its frontier origins to its place as a modern symbol of black success. The project became Built From the Fire, published by Penguin Random House in May 2023.    

Built From the Fire is a multigenerational saga of a community in Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street,” that in one century survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, urban renewal, and gentrification. The book was named one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times and one of the 50 best nonfiction books of the year by the Washington Post. In its review, the New York Times called the book “ambitious…absorbing…even hopeful.” Built From the Fire received the Best in Business Book Award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, the Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History award from the Oklahoma Historical Society, and the Lillian Smith Book Award from the Southern Regional Council.  

More important than the awards, Built From the Fire was embraced by many of the people from Greenwood who allowed Victor to tell a bit of their story in the book’s pages. After the book’s release, Victor organized a citywide community read in Tulsa in partnership with local colleges, libraries and black-owned businesses.  

Victor is now busy at work on his second book project. He travels the country speaking about the history of Greenwood at colleges and venues such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African History and Culture. He also continues to work as a journalist, freelancing for outlets such as The New Yorker, the New York Times and Smithsonian magazine.