by Sam Juliano
On July, 15, 2021 children’s literature lost one of its most renowned luminaries. With nearly one-hundred books as an illustrator produced in a remarkably prolific career launched in 1988, African-American Floyd Cooper, who passed from cancer at age 65 was an author-artist who moved mountains in the book community and on social media where he was revered as a personable and humble man who exuded positive energy in the direction of any person fortunate enough to have crossed his path. Cooper, who also had Native American blood was one of the most critically celebrated figures in the industry and his works won numerous awards for the Coretta Scott King, Golden Kite and Charlotte Zolotow committees. Floyd has never won a Caldecott medal or honor citation in one om those freakish omissions usually attributed to timing and the depth of competition in a given year. In the Caldecott Medal Contender series staged here at Wonders in the Dark since 2013, four of Cooper’s books have been reviewed in sponsorship of award consideration: A Dance Like Starlight (authored by Kristy Dempsey); Where’s Rodney? (written by Carmen Bogan); The Ring Bearer and Juneteenth for Mazie. But Cooper’s full catalog is one of the most impressive of artist in children’s literature, and virtually every book he’s released has its own fan base. Of course his wife Velma, children Dayton and Kai and his grandchildren have suffered the most from his untimely departure, so for the legions who feel cheated of more masterpieces, matters do need to be placed in the proper perspective.
The author of Cooper’s swan song is Carole Boston Weatherford, another titan in the field, one whose powerful prose and poetry has inspired three other celebrated artists to Caldecott honors – while winning a Newbery honor for her novel Box: Henry Brown Mails Herself to Freedom, and the pairing with Cooper on the aptly titled Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre was perfectly chosen, inasmuch as Weatherford is a master of the slavery and segregation eras and Cooper was born and raised in the very location the book is set. Unspeakable, which can just as easily be titled Unconscionable is a disturbing picture book that boils your blood, especially after reading Weatherford’s afterward, where she reveals city policeman and officials bore complicity in the barbaric acts documented in the narrative proper. The time of what many historians consider the worst racial attack in American history was 1921 when segregation was in full flower, though for a short while a southwestern Shangra-La existed due to intrepid African-Americans who were said to have surpassed whites in neighborhood Tulsa, in fact perhaps in the entire state of Oklahoma in education, medicine and business diversity. Without interference from Caucasians the black community thrived and served as a model to other minority hamlets across the land. At the outset, after an introduction of ‘Greenwood”, once serving as a haven to displaced black from the racial violence in the deep south, Weatherford documents the obstacles facing such an ethnocentric nirvana:
Once upon a time in Greenwood, there were some ten thousand people living in a thirty-five-square block area. Train tracks divided the Black and white communities. Segregation laws called for separate neighborhoods, schools, phone booths, and railroad and streetcar coaches. Unfair tests made it hard for Blacks to register to vote. And laws barred marriages across racial lines.
With restrictions and a clear line of demarcation, one recalling the shame on display in films like Mississippi Burning, where blacks were not allowed to drink from the same water fountains as whites or in novels like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, where African-Americans were forced to sit in the balconies of court houses as they were considered second class citizens, to name just two of thousands of examples on the written page or on the screen, Weatherford then goes on to chronicle a short-lived period of resilience against all conceivable odds. Cooper employs an “oil and erasure” method to showcase grainy textures that capture the arid atmosphere first envisioned in the town of Greenwood, a Tulsa suburb divided by train tracks, the physical “wall” between the black and white communities.
Booker T. Washington called Greenwood the “Negro Wall Street of America”, though the label was later refined to simply “Black Wall Street” in honor of a thriving business street lined with grocery stores, restaurants, a poll hall, an auto shop and connected by a bus system. The author asserts at its peak Greenwood supported two-hundred businesses, several libraries and a hospital. Cooper’s color scheme and clothing opulence confirm a successful experiment, to that point one insulated against forces outside its realm of control. Cooper’s idyllic canvas of manicured homes exudes pride and contentment, with a Mom and her daughter gazing ahead of nature’s tranquility and the church they attend every Sunday.
The author’s depiction of the good life includes the assertion that a soda fountain at “Williams Confectionery” was a meeting place for couples looking to tie the knot. Greenwood also hosted “Miss Mabel’s Little Rose Beauty Salon,” the place of choice for black maids. Surely some would evoke “Calpurnia,” the affluent mother-like Maycomb maid in the Lee novel or the black housekeeper “Annie Johnson” from Douglas Sirk’s 1934 melodrama Imitation of Life. While Weatherford doesn’t overtly make such a claim, the likelihood of strong bonding between Greenwood blacks and their white employers on the other side of the tracks and in Tulsa is persuasive, and a vital part of such an equation would be the high quality of life enjoyed by the African-American community.
Once upon a time in Greenwood, there were two movie theaters including the eight-hundred-seat, Black-owned Dreamland. There were even six privately owned airplanes.
The supreme measure of opulence is envisioned by Cooper, who paints a spiffy yellow Model T and a splendid movie palace on the same cross corner at the Stratford Hotel, which according to the author was then the “largest Black-owned hotel in the nation, though the disclaimer Weatherford adds “Black guests were welcome there even as they were barred from Tulsa’s white hotels” underscores the painful reality.
Inevitably, poses Weatherford, black wealth and comfort rubbed some whites the wrong way. Greenwood was a reminder to insecure and envious Caucasians that when they applied themselves blacks were just as poised for success as the whites who always considered themselves superior. World War I started after Grand Duke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated seven years before the events of Unspeakable, but all it took to set loose the simmering hatred in Oklahoma was was an elevator ride, where a white seventeen year-old female operator evoking Mayella Ewell falsely accused a black shoeshine man of assaulting her. Her charge then set off ferocious violence and misguided retribution. Cooper’s shadowy palette is dark brown and and it pictorially spies the coming maelstrom. Much like the grossly victimized Tom Robinson, the black man is jailed, but other blacks fearing a lynch mob would descend upon his place of incarceration rush to protect him bearing arms. the bigoted Tulsa Tribune ran headlines, stirring up the already unhinged white community.
Though the whites heavily outnumbered the black protectors, the ensuing skirmish left ten Caucasians dead as opposed to a pair of black men. Frustrated that they couldn’t gain access to the jail the whites pushed another falsehood about the blacks planning a major assault. Cooper used closeup figures to document the building tensions. And then the whites do the unthinkable. They storm Greenwood, looting and burning everything in their path. The author accentuates the tragedy, stating for some the damage undid lifetimes of sacrifice. Firefighters were blocked by the threat of gunfire from dousing the flames. The outnumbered and outgunned Blacks were forced to flee with only the items they could carry. Cooper’s frantic and muted silhouettes hint at the coming carnage, and in the following double page spread surrenders embody the cruel fate of thousands. Three hundred blacks were killed and the staggering number included the famed Dr. Jackson. Hundreds more were injured and eight thousand were left homeless. The illustrator resonantly portrays the survivors of this most infamous of American tragedies as people betrayed by their supposed protectors. Sent to camps, some left never to return. The National Guard intervened but by then there was little to do aside from putting out some fires and helping the displace blacks to the camps.
The worst racial attack in the nation’s history was plotted and abated by whites in every position of authority. The shame of the event is a scourge on western civilization. Weatherford’s blunt denunciation of those responsible is still suffused with hope and the belief that people can choose to reject hate:
Today, Tulsa’s reconciliation Park remembers victims of the 1921 massacre and recalls the role of African Americans in Oklahoma history. But the park is not just a bronze monument to the past. It is a place to realize the responsibility we all have to reject hatred and violence and to instead choose hope.
Cooper’s finale, the clasping of hands recalls the spirit of his rejuvenating Juneteeth for Mazie, but the message posed is couched in trans-formative expectation. Weatherford stated in an interview that she thought Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre might be Floyd’s masterpiece. Though the late illustrator has created as many truly great books as any artist living or deceased, I am inclined to agree with the author. As such it cries out for posthumous recognition from the Caldecott committee for a bevy of reasons. One final one is the glaring metamorphosis of Greenwood shown in the end papers, which alone rips your heart out. Unspeakable is a supreme masterpiece, a dream collaboration between one of the most justly admired and accomplished writers in the field and an iconic artist.
Note: This is the seventh entry in the 2021 Caldecott Medal Contender series. The series does not purport to predict what the committee will or should choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running. In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration. I am not certain how many reviews will be written in a year maligned by pandemic issues and other commitments. But I do hope to showcase the picture books I really think should be talked about when determining year-end awards for illustration.
Fantastic essay on a shameful episode of our past. Author and artist in a masterful collaboration.
A moving book, essential for grade school children as an introduction to race issues in America. Sam, your review is incredible. So sad we have lost Cooper. I agree he has been one of the finest artists for many years.
Sam, this appalling event breaks one’s heart. And incredibly it is not rare.
This past year in Canada several sites were discovered of indigenous children’s unmarked graves–children that had been removed from their family homes to residential schools far from their parents to learn the wonders of civilization. The poison of advantage is a global evil.
The great illustrations become a homage of equilibrium.
Your essay is powerful and beautiful.