deerstalker
The Listener is like going to a spectacular one-act play and being blown away by every moment.
The film stars Tessa Thompson (Creed) in one of the most touching performances I’ve experienced from this artist. The film is beautifully directed by veteran TV and film actor Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire) and written by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Alessandro Camon (The Messenger).
Thompson plays Beth, a volunteer for a telephone mental health support line, who takes calls at home from her laptop and uses a pseudonym to protect her privacy. The film takes place during an evening shift as Beth handles calls from all kinds of lonely, depressed people on the brink of a collapse.
Alessandro Camon’s screenplay is an incredible deep dive into the anxiety and diverse existential crises that are a part of life for so many folks in this post-pandemic society. As Beth encounters each call, we see her navigate the pathways of empathy and compassion through active listening. She never advises or judges, but her soothing voice asks questions and comforts through unconditional compassion. Even through the most challenging callers, Beth listens.
Tessa Thompson does an incredible job in this role. She is on screen for 96 minutes, the film takes place in one location, her apartment, and the film just flies by. Shot in just six days, Buscemi’s direction and use of camera, lighting, sound, and voiceover editing create a sense of reality and expansiveness that allows the audience to lose themselves in each caller’s story.
Experiencing The Listener is like being a fly on the wall in Beth’s apartment as she goes through her shift. I love that there is no exact time pattern for each call. Some of the callers are long winded, some ramble on nonstop sentences, and others engage Beth, attempting to find out more about her or get a rise out of her. Each call is like reading a fantastic short story or listening to an engrossing audiobook or podcast play.
The film utilizes music to make the narrative spacious. The original score from Los Angeles-based composer Aska Matsumia (score for After Yang) is stunning. The soundscape of the film takes the audience on a journey through mood. Each caller has a subtly different element of sound or silence that adds texture to the story. Sound design is a character in this film that moves the action forward and draws the audience in. The conversation between Beth and a female college professor with a British accent was a masterpiece. This incredible team showcases the power of listening and how this simple ability is a mental health superpower. The Listener also cleverly infuses visual art into specific scenes, which adds to the richness of storytelling.
I was struck by how simple this film seems on the surface yet how utterly complex, devastating, and ultimately heartwarming and hopeful it ends up being, all with one actor on screen in one location. Tessa Thompson has the chops to add the visual landscape to the audio story we hear from each caller. She couldn’t have done it without a group of incredible actors who I must mention. Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus), Derek Cecil (House of Cards), Margaret Cho (Are You There Go? It’s Me, Margaret), Blu Del Barrio (Star Trek: Discovery), Ricky Velez (The King of Staten Island), Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development), Jamie Hector (Bosch), Casey Wilson (Gone Girl), Bobby Soto (The Tax Collector), and Rebecca Hall (Vicky Christina Barcelona) all deserve their flowers.
Beth has a dog named Coltrane who is her trusty companion—gotta love the four-footed family representation. The chemistry between Beth and Coltrane works magnificently, and mirrors what so many of us experienced as we worked from home during the pandemic. The story occurs in our present COVID-19 reality but doesn’t beat the audience over the head with the trauma of the past three years of the pandemic. Still, through the look and feel of the film and Thompson’s perfect embodiment of Beth, I immediately knew and could relate to where she was coming from.
The film is set in Los Angeles, and one of the callers mentions how we all move to cities and live on top of each other only to be the most lonely generation. We have all of this technology to connect, yet so many feel they have no choice but to call a crisis helpline for support because they have no one to listen when they can’t sleep in the middle of the night.
Screenwriter Alessandro Camon has a degree in philosophy and has put it to use in crafting this script. The writing is sublime, and I love the deep conversations about the universe, consciousness, the nature of existence, and the human experience woven through the narrative. The use of language and storytelling in the film paint vibrant images in the imagination. One of the callers muses, “I don’t have an urge to kill myself, I’m just looking at it objectively.” Another simply states, “Loneliness is a big slut.”
Buscemi’s direction and Thompson’s skilled and subtle acting choices give us a Beth who is not a “magical Negro” or any other stereotypical trope we often see when Black women are placed in roles like this traditionally in cinema. Beth isn’t just a vessel for others to gain wisdom from. We see the toll that listening to the trauma of others all night takes on her, we learn why she is compelled to do this work, and we see how Beth nourishes herself as she helps others.
In a world filled with self-centered people, people who volunteer to help others can be easily perceived to be saints with higher levels of consciousness to be revered. But in reality, nobody, including Beth, does anything for anyone else without having a personal agenda. I love how this film models a strategy so many folks use to find peace of mind in a world filled with chaos. The Listener is a beautifully complex and elegantly relatable film with an open heart that models the power of empathy and leaves the audience with a sense of hope.
The Listener premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in June 2023.
The Listener is like going to a spectacular one-act play and being blown away by every moment.
The film stars Tessa Thompson (Creed) in one of the most touching performances I’ve experienced from this artist. The film is beautifully directed by veteran TV and film actor Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire) and written by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Alessandro Camon (The Messenger).
Thompson plays Beth, a volunteer for a telephone mental health support line, who takes calls at home from her laptop and uses a pseudonym to protect her privacy. The film takes place during an evening shift as Beth handles calls from all kinds of lonely, depressed people on the brink of a collapse.
Alessandro Camon’s screenplay is an incredible deep dive into the anxiety and diverse existential crises that are a part of life for so many folks in this post-pandemic society. As Beth encounters each call, we see her navigate the pathways of empathy and compassion through active listening. She never advises or judges, but her soothing voice asks questions and comforts through unconditional compassion. Even through the most challenging callers, Beth listens.
Tessa Thompson does an incredible job in this role. She is on screen for 96 minutes, the film takes place in one location, her apartment, and the film just flies by. Shot in just six days, Buscemi’s direction and use of camera, lighting, sound, and voiceover editing create a sense of reality and expansiveness that allows the audience to lose themselves in each caller’s story.
Experiencing The Listener is like being a fly on the wall in Beth’s apartment as she goes through her shift. I love that there is no exact time pattern for each call. Some of the callers are long winded, some ramble on nonstop sentences, and others engage Beth, attempting to find out more about her or get a rise out of her. Each call is like reading a fantastic short story or listening to an engrossing audiobook or podcast play.
The film utilizes music to make the narrative spacious. The original score from Los Angeles-based composer Aska Matsumia (score for After Yang) is stunning. The soundscape of the film takes the audience on a journey through mood. Each caller has a subtly different element of sound or silence that adds texture to the story. Sound design is a character in this film that moves the action forward and draws the audience in. The conversation between Beth and a female college professor with a British accent was a masterpiece. This incredible team showcases the power of listening and how this simple ability is a mental health superpower. The Listener also cleverly infuses visual art into specific scenes, which adds to the richness of storytelling.
I was struck by how simple this film seems on the surface yet how utterly complex, devastating, and ultimately heartwarming and hopeful it ends up being, all with one actor on screen in one location. Tessa Thompson has the chops to add the visual landscape to the audio story we hear from each caller. She couldn’t have done it without a group of incredible actors who I must mention. Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus), Derek Cecil (House of Cards), Margaret Cho (Are You There Go? It’s Me, Margaret), Blu Del Barrio (Star Trek: Discovery), Ricky Velez (The King of Staten Island), Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development), Jamie Hector (Bosch), Casey Wilson (Gone Girl), Bobby Soto (The Tax Collector), and Rebecca Hall (Vicky Christina Barcelona) all deserve their flowers.
Beth has a dog named Coltrane who is her trusty companion—gotta love the four-footed family representation. The chemistry between Beth and Coltrane works magnificently, and mirrors what so many of us experienced as we worked from home during the pandemic. The story occurs in our present COVID-19 reality but doesn’t beat the audience over the head with the trauma of the past three years of the pandemic. Still, through the look and feel of the film and Thompson’s perfect embodiment of Beth, I immediately knew and could relate to where she was coming from.
The film is set in Los Angeles, and one of the callers mentions how we all move to cities and live on top of each other only to be the most lonely generation. We have all of this technology to connect, yet so many feel they have no choice but to call a crisis helpline for support because they have no one to listen when they can’t sleep in the middle of the night.
Screenwriter Alessandro Camon has a degree in philosophy and has put it to use in crafting this script. The writing is sublime, and I love the deep conversations about the universe, consciousness, the nature of existence, and the human experience woven through the narrative. The use of language and storytelling in the film paint vibrant images in the imagination. One of the callers muses, “I don’t have an urge to kill myself, I’m just looking at it objectively.” Another simply states, “Loneliness is a big slut.”
Buscemi’s direction and Thompson’s skilled and subtle acting choices give us a Beth who is not a “magical Negro” or any other stereotypical trope we often see when Black women are placed in roles like this traditionally in cinema. Beth isn’t just a vessel for others to gain wisdom from. We see the toll that listening to the trauma of others all night takes on her, we learn why she is compelled to do this work, and we see how Beth nourishes herself as she helps others.
In a world filled with self-centered people, people who volunteer to help others can be easily perceived to be saints with higher levels of consciousness to be revered. But in reality, nobody, including Beth, does anything for anyone else without having a personal agenda. I love how this film models a strategy so many folks use to find peace of mind in a world filled with chaos. The Listener is a beautifully complex and elegantly relatable film with an open heart that models the power of empathy and leaves the audience with a sense of hope.
The Listener premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in June 2023.
Despite what many believe, Miles Morales was not the first non-Peter Parker Spider-Man to star in his ongoing series. Nor was he the first non-white hero to use the name. The first was Miguel O’Hara, famously known as Spider-Man 2099. Created by writer Peter David and artist Rick Leonardi, this Spidey was part of a publishing initiative by Marvel known as the 2099 universe. In the early ’90s, Marvel Comics gave many of their most popular titles futuristic updates, often with new characters wearing the famous mantles of past heroes. There was X-Men 2099, Punisher 2099, and of course, Spider-Man 2099. And thanks to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse film, Miguel O’Hara’s Spidey is a household name. Here’s the backstory of this once-forgotten ’90s hero.
Miguel O’Hara: The Most ’90s Spider-Man
In the early ’90s, the comics industry was booming. DC sold millions of comics with stunts like Superman’s death. And Marvel crushed it by selling 10 million copies collectively of Spider-Man #1 and X-Men #1. This resulted in a brief comic boom, which also coincided with the rise of Image Comics. Marvel launched a whole new line of books, conceived by Stan Lee and superstar creator John Byrne. This new line of comics would take place a century in the future from the regular Marvel series, “The Marvel World of Tomorrow.”
That title became a bit of a mouthful, so it became Marvel 2093, then finally, Marvel 2099. Spider-Man 2009 first appeared in a preview in 1992’s Amazing Spider-Man #365, before launching in his own ongoing title a few months later. Writer Peter David named him Miguel after his friend actor Miguel Ferrer, best known for his roles in Twin Peaks and Robocop. He was given mixed ethnicity, with an Irish father and a Mexican mother. This was something that was a pretty big deal at the time when most superheroes were of caucasian and North American descent only.
The Comics Origins of Spider-Man 2099
Miguel O’Hara/Spider-Man 2099 was from what appeared to be the future of the mainstream 616 Marvel Universe. However, it was later revealed as Earth-928. Miguel was the head of the genetics department at the mega-corporation called Alchemax. He spent much of his time trying to replicate the powers of the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker. Miguel’s manipulative boss Tyler Stone got him addicted to a drug called Rapture, an addiction that Miguel tried to purge from himself by making himself the guinea pig in his experiments to replicate spider powers. But a co-worker named Aaron Delgado, who was always jealous of his success at Alchemax, sabotaged the machine that would give Miguel spider abilities. He now had a staggering 50% arachnid DNA. The machine exploded, and Tyler Stone began the hunt for his former employee to unlock the secrets of his powers.
Using an old Dia de Los Muertos costume, which was made from unstable molecules (an invention of the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards), Miguel donned the suit and became the year 2099’s new Spider-Man. Miguel embraced this new Spider-Man 2099 identity, and became an enemy to not only his former employer Alchemax, but also all the corrupt megacorporations which run the world in the future. He also fought many futuristic versions of classic Peter Parker foes, like the Vulture and the Green Goblin. Always with the help of his holographic assistant, Lyla. Eventually, thanks to some time travel shenanigans, Spider-Man 2099 even met his predecessor Peter Parker in the past. The solo Spider-Man 2099 Marvel Comics series ran for four years and had a respectable 46 issues. But in the late ‘90s, Marvel Comics hit serious financial troubles and shuttered the whole line. Miguel’s Spider-Man 2099 would be more or less absent from the Marvel Universe for a decade.
The Powers of Spider-Man 2099
Miguel O’Hara has powers similar to Peter Parker, but they are not exactly the same. Like Peter, Spide-Man 2099 has the proportionate strength, agility, and speed of a spider. But he can only climb on walls thanks to the talons he grew on his appendages. He also has a pair of fangs that deliver poisonous venom. Some have joked that, in some ways, Spider-Man 2099 is a “vampire Spider-Man.” Unlike Peter, Miguel O’Hara’s webbing comes out of his wrists naturally, a power Spider-Man 2099 had whole decade before Tobey Maguire had organic webs. He tends to prefer gliding to swinging on webs, though. Unlike Peter, Spider-Man 2099 has no traditional Spider-Man “Spidey Sense.” However, he makes up for this fact with telescopic vision, not to mention his super hearing.
Spider-Man 2099 in Modern Marvel Comics
In the 2000s, Miguel found himself stranded in the past. Spider-Man 2099 finally showed up again in mainstream monthly titles like Amazing Spider-Man. Miguel even worked for Peter in his Parker Industries empire before Peter lost it all and went back to being an ordinary middle-class guy. He appeared a few more times, particularly in the crossover comics events like Spider-Verse or Spider-Geddon. Spider-Man 2099 even got a new white costume while stuck almost a century in the past. But without a doubt, his upcoming appearance in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is his biggest mainstream appearance—at least outside of comics.
Who Is the Animated Miguel O’Hara/Spider-Man 2099 in Across the Spider-Verse?
We saw Spider-Man 2099 and his assistant Lyla in the post-credits scene for Into the Spider-Verse. Then Spider-Man 2099 played a key role in its sequel, with Oscar Isaac reprising his role. In Across the Spider-Verse, we learned that Miguel runs the Spider-Society of multiversal spider-heroes in Nueva York, on Earth-928B. Unlike his Marvel Comics counterpart, this Spider-Man 2099’s home city looks utopian—not like a dystopian hellscape.
Miguel built the device that allowed him to hop dimensions within the multiverse, something we saw at the end of Into the Spider-Verse. Eventually, he discovered a universe where he had a family and a daughter. When his alternate self there died, Miguel decided to replace him on that Earth and raise his daughter as his own. But that one anomaly seemingly caused that particular Earth to unmake itself, apparently killing everyone on it.
Now despondent over his unintended actions, Miguel created the Spider-Society, multi-dimensional Spider-People dedicated to returning any wayward Spider-People back to their proper dimension after the Super Collider event at the end of the previous film. Most importantly, his trauma caused him to enforce a strict mandate: every spider hero had to follow their intended destiny and “canon event,” usually a personal tragedy, otherwise it could lead to anomalies like the one that destroyed the alternate Miguel’s world.
Miguel sees Miles Morales as the “original anomaly.” He says Miles’ unintended existence as Spider-Man is the entire reason he had to create a Spider-Society in the first place. When Miles lets it be known that he won’t allow his personal “canon event” to take place—the death of his father—Miguel sends the entire Spider-Society out to stop him. Although he thinks he’s doing the right thing, Miguel O’Hara is the real antagonist of Across the Spider-Verse. Here’s hoping he sees the error of his ways by the third film. We’d hate to see Spider-Man 2099 only as a misguided villain; he deserves a heroic turn.
Originally published on May 31, 2023.
The post Who Is ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE’S Spider-Man 2099? appeared first on Nerdist.
Here’s a new entry in the ‘Manga You Should Be Reading’ series I started here at BNP about singular manga series that I spotlight and elaborate on. I aim to write about manga series that are highly acclaimed, manga series that are finally getting anime adaptations, and hopefully manga that will move you the way that they have moved me.
At heart, with these entries–major spoiler free–I hope to give you a good feel of the series and why it is so loved and/or poured over. This is a manga series that I consider a hidden gem that really surprised me with the depth of its narrative and extremely detailed artwork in regards to mechanical beings. My friends, you should be reading the ever-intriguing Country Without Humans!!
The Country Without Humans
Story and Art by: IWATOBINEKO
Publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment
Available Formats: Print
Ongoing or Completed: Ongoing (3 volumes as of June 2023)
Localization Team: Deniz Amasya (Translator), Robert Harkins (Letterer), Kim Kindya (Adaptation) Leighanna DeRouen(Proof reading), Jenn Grunigen (Editor)
What is this Manga About:
Shii finds that she is the only human left in a city inhabited by nothing but machines. She awakens and is on the run from terrifying machines suited for combat and hunting. As she flees the eerie and unfamiliar streets, she has a fateful encounter with a mechanical golem named Bulb. While the golem is without speaking capabilities, it is a strange machine that protects the young girl and makes her feel safe. She follows it home and this event serves as the start of their journey together as companions as protector and the one being protected.
The streets and shops of this entire city are bustling and full of life…but not humans. Artificial life cleans the streets, waits for customers in shops, and looks for people to guide through town. They make beds, polish walls, collect garbage and yet all the humans have disappeared. Shii looks for answers along with the silent Bulb. Together as they travel, the little girl finds new allies, learns despairing realizations, and finds that there’s a lot more than what meets the eye in this place.
Her relationship to Bulb, a golem (an autonomous humanoid robot built to take orders from humans and carry out their will), changes with every dangerous encounter that they have with the greater conspiracy that once divided humans and golems. Can their existences be beneficial to each other? Can these two ultimately save each other? The Country Without Humans features a developing friendship between the two creations: human and machine—and the winding, complicated story to understand what happened to the society they both belong to.
Recommended for:
- People who are endeared to the ‘found family’ trope
- Fans of mech, robots, and all manners of created machines
- Readers looking for shorter manga series with female protagonists
- Readers who love science fiction and dystopian settings in manga
- Manga readers who want an engaging story that challenges your ideal of humanity
Can My Kid(s) Read the Source Material:
The publisher’s website labels the manga as “TEEN.” This manga is for readers roughly ages 13 – 17 years of age. I would recommend this series be held for the older teens for some emotional scenes that have some imagery that might be deemed scary for younger readers.
Where Can I Read It:
In print, the manga series is available through Rightstuf, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop, and other places. You can also find the manga via Bookshop and Powell’s Books!
Who are Some Important Characters You Should Know About:
Shii: an adorable, little girl who is on a mission to figure out what’s going on and why she’s the only human in this bustling city of man-made machines. She’s small and short in stature but loud. She is ever curious about the world and how it all works. She sees Bulb as her protector and his first friend in this strange journey that she’s taking.
There are gaps in her memory, but she has strange dreams that hint at her parents, her home and important places she thinks she should return to. She maintains a belief that while it’s great that golem serve humans, they should have a say in their work. She hates to see golems mistreated and doesn’t agree with the casual way that they are disassembled, treated as secondhand citizens, and tossed away when deemed worthless. She is a much more important person in the great scheme of things than she knows.
Bulb: a golem: an autonomous humanoid robot built to take orders from humans and carry out their will. It has an interesting design that includes an intimidating build with a single eye that often stares. Being non-verbal, it gives off a stoic attitude but is aided by the speak-compatible assistant golem, Muimui, that acts a sort of sidekick character.
Bulb is a highly adaptive model of golem that can engage in combat, rescue, and searching. Readers may find the backstory behind its previous master a sad story, yet I found that it evolved into a more layered story involving illegally modified goods and who has the right to better their life with such machines.
Why I Believe You Should be Reading it:
The Country Without Humans delves into a world that many, if not most of us, have envisioned already. At this point with the wave of AI-generated media, robot powered task forces, and more and more self-service kiosks in our neighborhoods, it is a world without humans. I, myself, have pondered about the price and value of labor when it is taken out of the hands of people. I’m happy to hear that some work is automated, yet other work needs a human touch, or ear. There’s a steady, consistent argument that all of this will make it all easier or streamlined, and people will be able to have a better quality of life. Yet, anyone who wasn’t born yesterday knows of stories we’ve consumed from comics to films to video games that tell of the darker side of this idealistic view and how quickly it can quickly develop and get out of hand.
For me, what makes The Country Without Humans so intriguing is IWATOBINEKO’s take on how we can define being alive and how we might consider who or what is precious. Through Shii and Bulb, readers will be challenged with their grasp of humanity and who or what is more sacred and important to society. Shii finds a world that is willing to cater to her, a world she is told is made for her. Yet, this doesn’t comfort her. She’s alone without any other humans around and yet finds mechanical beings who keep bringing out emotions in her: protectiveness, joy, fear, and so on.
The first volume features a few pages of the memories of an assistant robot at the junk shop Shii finds herself at. It is revealed that its owner, now long gone–was a legitimate parts dealer–obtained the robot and made it into his own effective worker. The dealer found a cheaper way to gain cheap labor and even saw it as a form of revenge: he was replaced by such a model. After losing his job to the new robot workforce the city created, he turned to seedy dealings, unable to make an honest living. These small bits of the story masterfully add to the bigger picture of issues that had been created and festering in the city that was upgraded to make life easier for all.
The second volume of this manga series is my favorite: readers will uncover more about Bulb’s master and the many people and golems who fell into the cracks and created their own lives. Shii finds a number of golems and learns about their many functions. Some golems were created to be friendly–social use golems. Others are more intricate than others, emulating humans or toys for children. Others were made for more nefarious or unsettling purposes with tools and weapons meant for cruel purposes. One truth remains for all: they all desire directions and purpose from another-a human.
This brilliant second volume of The Country Without Humans brings us a story courted with different movements–like the Droids Rights movement of the fictional Star Wars universe when we learn of the damning and stigma of illegally modified golems seeking out a living. I am also reminded of the real life Right To Repair movement that strives to legally allow owners of devices and equipment to freely modify and repair their belongings. The cast of golems that Shii and Bulb are surrounded by grows and giving readers glimpses into the many different golems created and the ways that they service each other, protect each other, and, in a way, keep each other whole.
The third volume of The Country Without Humans builds on that momentum with much emotional upheaval that I wasn’t ready for. This particular leg in the journey asks readers what makes a life manufactured. The exit of a certain character introduced in the previous volume begs the question of how to define servitude and when does it become someone or something’s purpose that carries them. If mechanical beings, machines “live” to serve, then do they also live to retire or end their lives? I was reminded of the controversy in regard to morality when euthanasia, or physician-assisted suicide, is brought up in debates, and this pushes the narrative in this manga to be a thought-provoking one that I continue to think about.
What this manga series does have that may seem formulaic to some readers is the child/younger person/creature team up with the older and/or stoic person/non-human that is already so present and as a trope in much of the media we consume. Bulb guides Shii, who knows little of this world and also is an amnesiac. I agree this trope is overused; however, these two make the tropes and this story their own. Not every story about dystopias is created equal, yet IWATOBINEKO’ s work feels special with this duo. The child and the golem both actively seek to protect each other. I believe that they help redefine what a family unit can be. Just as a family can be parents and a child, it can also be a lion and his group of weiner dogs, and it can also be a little girl, two golems, and their comrades who protect her and are basically raising her.
The Country Without Humans has built up such an intriguing story revolving around purpose, consent, and desire against the backdrop of the absence of humans and the complicated messiness that created carrying on without them. With only three volumes published so far, it has pushed the envelope in crafting a relevant and moving story on being a single gear in the moving parts of a near future society. I love that the series shines a light on the darker parts of innovation and reminds me as a reader that agency belongs to us, all. Including, Bulb and the other golems who have plenty to teach humans and vice versa. I love the hints about evolution, the limits that both humans and machines have, and the consequences that can spill out and make change. I continue to be invested in this series and believe you should be reading The Country Without Humans!
The Country Without Humans is available where comics and most manga are sold.
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The post Manga You Should Be Reading: ‘The Country Without Humans’ appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
This year marks the 102nd anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and it includes the harrowing story of the oldest living survivor, Viola Fletcher, who recently turned 109 years old.
“Mother Fletcher,” as she’s affectionately known, has written a memoir titled Don’t Let Them Bury My Story: The Oldest Living Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre in Her Own Words. In it, she recounts her journey from being a terrified 7-year-old girl forced to escape her burning neighborhood of Greenwood to testifying before Congress to ensure justice for the victims of the massacre. It was one of the bloodiest racial attacks ever in United States history.
On May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a Black teenage shoeshine boy, was arrested and charged for assaulting a white elevator operator named Sarah Page in the elevator of a building in downtown Tulsa. The next day, the newspaper printed a story saying that Rowland had tried to rape Page, with an accompanying editorial stating that a lynching was planned for that night. That evening mobs of both Blacks and whites appeared at the courthouse where Rowland was being held. A confrontation took place that resulted in the death of a white protester. The Tulsa massacre was consequently ignited.
Beginning May 31 and lasting for two days, the massacre left as many as 300 people dead, mostly Black people, and destroyed Tulsa’s prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood known as “Black Wall Street.” More than 35 blocks of Black homes and businesses were burned to the ground, nearly 10,000 people were left homeless, and the rampage caused more than $2 million in damage. Despite this devastating event, it had been barely mentioned in the history books until a state commission was formed to document the incident in the late 1990s.
The consensus later was that whatever happened between Rowland and Page in that elevator was harmless. Perhaps Rowland accidentally stepped on her foot or bumped into her when the elevator shifted from one floor to the next. At that time, simply daring to smile at a white woman could get you killed.
Mother Fletcher was the second oldest of eight children. Her younger brother, Hughes Van Ellis, was a newborn at the time of the massacre, and as of 2021 was 100 years old. The house they grew up in had no electricity. On the night of the massacre, Fletcher was in bed asleep; her mother woke the family and they fled for their lives. Due to uncontrollable circumstances after the massacre, the family lost everything but the clothes they were wearing. Fletcher left school after the 4th grade. In 1932, she married Robert Fletcher. They moved to California during World War II to work in the shipyards, where she was an assistant welder. After the war, the couple settled in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to raise their three children, and Fletcher eventually retired from work at age 85.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been forced to confront inescapable facts of past and present racism. W.E.B. Du Bois predicted in 1903 that the issue of the 20th century would be “the problem of the color line.” He has been proven right many times over.
The Tulsa Race Massacre is a stark reminder of how white fear can run so deep that it can destroy Black legacies and inheritances when there’s disruption of that color line Du Bois spoke of. For Black people in 1921, their families passed down something else from one generation to the next: the mental and emotional stress that results from the constant threat of white violence and financial insecurity. In a matter of two days, everything the thriving Greenwood community had built was gone. More importantly, every dream, goal, and plan they had for that community were destroyed as well.
Many people were introduced to the Tulsa Race Massacre because of HBO’s Watchmen in 2019. The very first episode of the series opens with a depiction of the horrific events, showing a Black World War I veteran trying to protect his wife and son as they escape the attack on Black Wall Street. What I appreciated about this was they didn’t sugarcoat what happened. They showed Tulsa’s Black residents being hunted, their homes and businesses being burned down, as well as airplanes flying over the city to drop bombs.
HBO continued the history lesson in 2020 with Lovecraft Country. During the ninth episode, entitled Rewind 1921, the show’s main characters travel back in time to Tulsa to recover pages of a book needed to save another character’s life after she had been cursed. They arrive in Greenwood the day of the massacre. The episode shows the reality of white mobs killing Black residents and burning down homes and businesses.
It is believed that the hundreds of people that were killed are buried in mass graves. Experts have been searching local cemeteries for victims of the massacre. Today, Greenwood, like so many once-prosperous Black areas, remains severely economically depressed.
In her testimony to Congress, Mother Fletcher described what Greenwood meant to its residents and detailed how she lives with the memories every day. “Our country may forget this history, but I cannot, I will not, and other survivors do not, and our descendants do not.”
As many Americans will soon prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July, it shouldn’t be lost on us that not every part of our history has been worth celebrating. It’s difficult to learn about the massacre and even see it being depicted on screen without being deeply moved by it. It’s a story of so much pain brought by the hands of racists. It’s not a feel-good story. Mother Fletcher lived through it, but her story, however, is one of triumph. She gives true meaning to the strong Black woman and is continuing to fight for justice every step of the way.
Mother Fletcher’s book, Don’t Let Them Bury My Story, will be available July 4, 2023.