Common Reading – Disabled Jan 2023

The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice by Scott Ellsworth has been selected as UNC Charlotte’s Common Reading Experience text for fall 2022:

“Over the course of less than twenty-four hours in the spring of 1921, Tulsa’s infamous “Black Wall Street” was wiped off the map—and erased from the history books. Official records were disappeared, researchers were threatened, and the worst single incident of racial violence in American history was kept hidden for more than fifty years. But there were some secrets that would not die.

A riveting and essential new book, The Ground Breaking not only tells the long-suppressed story of the notorious Tulsa race massacre. It also unearths the lost history of how the massacre was covered up, and of the courageous individuals who fought to keep the story alive. Most important, it recounts the ongoing archeological saga and the search for the unmarked graves of the victims of the massacre, and of the fight to win restitution for the survivors and their families.” (source: Penguin Random House)

Scott Ellsworth will speak to the UNC Charlotte community on Thursday, October 13 in Student Union 340. The event begins at 7:00 p.m. Ellsworth teaches in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. We hope you can join us!

Former Common Reading Selections