A Witness to the Tulsa Massacre, and a Family History Forever Altered (nytimes.com)

Anneliese M. Bruner was in her mid-30s when her father presented her with a small red book. It was bound in cloth and worn at the corners. “This is a book your grandmother wrote,” he told her, “and I want you to see what you can do with it. You are the matriarch of the family now, and I’m giving this to you.”

Opening it, she saw a panoramic photograph that revealed the utter destruction of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Okla., in the immediate aftermath of a white mob descending on the neighborhood and killing hundreds of Black residents.

It was the first time Ms. Bruner had ever heard about the book, the Tulsa race massacre or even her great-grandmother, Mary E. Jones Parrish. The story would go like this: On the evening of May 31, 1921, Ms. Parrish’s daughter, Florence Mary, Ms. Bruner’s grandmother, called her to the window and said, “Mother, I see men with guns.”

“The Nation Must Awake: My Witness to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921,” is a first-person account by Ms. Parrish, compiled immediately after the massacre, and includes her memories and the recollections of others.

Who do you hope the book reaches?

Everyone. And I would hope that people are touched by the human part of this story. Mary Jones Parrish said she hoped the book would reach the thinking people of America. I would like this book to reach them as well.

And certainly young learners, too, who are at a critical point when they are about to be denied by certain legislators, the opportunity to know objective truths. And these are things within a democracy that are not optional. Truth is not optional. And the learning of the truth must also always be at the forefront