Loyalty is so excited to welcome Brandy Colbert and Christina Hammonds Reed to celebrate the release of Black Birds in the Sky! This event is free to attend and will be held digitally via Crowdcast. Click here to register for the event. You can also order a copy of Black Birds in the Sky from our website to be automatically added to the registration list, and there will be an option to snag the book during the event.

A searing new work of nonfiction from award-winning author Brandy Colbert about the history and legacy of one of the most deadly and destructive acts of racial violence in American history: the Tulsa Race Massacre.

In the early morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob marched across the train tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and into its predominantly Black Greenwood District—a thriving, affluent neighborhood known as America's Black Wall Street. They brought with them firearms, gasoline, and explosives.

In a few short hours, they'd razed thirty-five square blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds dead. The Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the most devastating acts of racial violence in US history. But how did it come to pass? What exactly happened? And why are the events unknown to so many of us today?

These are the questions that award-winning author Brandy Colbert seeks to answer in this unflinching nonfiction account of the Tulsa Race Massacre. In examining the tension that was brought to a boil by many factors—white resentment of Black economic and political advancement, the resurgence of white supremacist groups, the tone and perspective of the media, and more—a portrait is drawn of an event singular in its devastation, but not in its kind. It is part of a legacy of white violence that can be traced from our country's earliest days through Reconstruction, the Civil Rights movement in the mid–twentieth century, and the fight for justice and accountability Black Americans still face today.

The Tulsa Race Massacre has long failed to fit into the story Americans like to tell themselves about the history of their country. This book, ambitious and intimate in turn, explores the ways in which the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre is the story of America—and by showing us who we are, points to a way forward.

Brandy Colbert is the critically acclaimed author of the young adult novels Pointe, The Voting Booth, Finding Yvonne, The Revolution of Birdie Randolph, and Stonewall Award winner Little & Lion, as well as the middle grade novel The Only Black Girls in Town. A trained journalist, she also worked with boundary-breaking ballet dancer Misty Copeland to adapt her memoir into the best-selling book Life In Motion: Young Readers Edition, and also co-adapted the young readers edition of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Born and raised in Springfield, Missouri, Brandy now lives and writes in Los Angeles, and is on the faculty at Hamline University's MFA program in writing for children and young adults. You can find her online at www.brandycolbert.com.

Christina Hammonds Reed holds an MFA from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. A native of the Los Angeles area, her work has previously appeared in the Santa Monica Review, One Teen Story, Teen Vogue, and Elle. Her first novel, The Black Kids, was a New York Times bestseller, a William C. Morris Award Finalist and a 2021 California Book Award Silver Medalist.

Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during this virtual event.

Brandy Colbert and Christina Hammonds Reed for BLACK BIRDS IN THE SKY