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"Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre"

Written by Carole Boston Weatherford                Illustrated by Floyd Cooper

       
Image Source: Amazon
        Carole Boston Weatherford is that author of "Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre". While there is no bibliography for the information in this informational picture book, there is an acknowledgment on the title verso page thanking the chair of the Education Committee for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, Hannibal B. Johnson, for reviewing the text in this book and sharing their own expertise on this tragic event in history. The audience is for younger children and so the scope feels appropriate. She highlights all the wonderful thriving businesses and the beauty that the Greenwood community had built.
        Weatherford's wrote this as a story narrative and uses language like "Once upon a time" repetitively that makes it seem as though it is a fairytale. I myself hadn't heard anything about the Tulsa Race Massacre until I was an undergrad in college. What a beautiful community that had been built there, only to be ripped away. There are no reference aids for this book.
        The typeface is easily read and a larger font size, like you would expect of a picture book. The lines, however, do not take up too much space on the page to allow Floyd Cooper's oil and erasure illustrations fill each spread. Cooper incorporates a warm color palette in the first half of the picture book that shows the warmth and joy of Greenwood. Then chose a stark black spread for the illustration of the elevator ride that not only shows a stark difference in the tone but uses the contrast of the elevator light that is almost eerie as the shoeshiner approached the elevator. Then the orange color palette begins to take over the spreads representing the fire that decimated Greenwood.


Weatherford, Carole Boston. Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Carolrhoda Books, 2021. 32 pages. ISBN 9781541581203.
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