Here, there, and everywhere

Some reflections on my first book tour

This article expands on the world of Built From the Fire, my new book on the history of Tulsa’s Greenwood District. Built From the Fire is available for purchase at Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and at local independent bookstores.

I returned to Tulsa a couple days ago after spending a month traveling the country to spread the word about Built From the Fire. I kept a very simple travel diary on my phone, which I’m excited to share with you all today (and which I posted weekly on my Instagram account during the tour).

Before I get to the fun stuff, I have to ask a favor of my Run It Back readers. Built From the Fire has been out in the world for a little more than a month now and gotten an avalanche of positive press. That feels great, but the momentum of the book still isn’t where I want it to be. You can help keep the energy going in three key ways:

1. Review - After you finish reading the book, please leave an honest review on Goodreads, Amazon, or both. Lots of reviews signal to potential readers that a book is worth checking out. It’s a really important factor in the publishing process. If you don’t have time to write a review, you can just leave a score (thank you to Bill Heath who left a lovely Amazon review just days after the book came out!)

2. Recommend - Books have to be hand-sold initially to really take off. If you haven’t posted your thoughts about the book yet on social media, please do so. It can be a big help in spreading the word. Even better is a personal recommendation of the book to a friend via text, email, or even…face to face.

3. Subscribe - You already did this part, so thank you. My newsletter is the best tool I have to keep people aware of what I’m up to next. You can let people know that if they’re curious to learn more about Greenwood or my writing process, they can get it right here.

Thanks once again for your support. Now for the good stuff: Victor’s tour diary.

Week 1: Oklahoma

My Tulsa book launch event alongside moderators Stevie “Dr. View” Johnson and Dreisen Heath.

Built From the Fire SELLS OUT at my Tulsa book launch event that kicks off the Black Wall Street Legacy Fest, an annual commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre in Greenwood. 50+ people also show up for my Oklahoma City event at the Oklahoma History Center. I dive into my personal stash to ensure there are books to sell in Tulsa throughout the weekend.

Chance encounters everywhere. I meet the descendants of Mabel Little, a massacre survivor and central figure in my book. Val and Willie Little and I decide to swap books; they give me their Aunt Mabel’s memoir, Fire on Mount Zion, while I give them Built From the Fire. The day after that, I meet a customer at Fulton Street Books who is visiting town and had just decided to buy my book on a whim moments before I walked into the bookstore. Of course I sign her copy, and she makes a lovely Instagram post about our encounter.

Couple days later, after the book has sold out at my Tulsa event, I meet some folks from Chicago at Silhouette, Greenwood’s sneaker store, who are ECSTATIC to see me, have me sign their books and go on a scouting mission to get more (I eventually wrangle four additional books for them).

Through it all my amazing family are by my side. So happy my girlfriend Ariel, my parents Luke and Shirley, my Aunt Claire and Uncle Stanley could all come for this momentous week. And my teenage cousin Stanley Jr. who worked on the book with me and finally got to see Greenwood with his own eyes.

A special week. A precious week.

Week 2: East Coast

Presenting at the Smithsonian with retired museum administrator and Greenwood descendant John W. Franklin

On Tuesday I present my book at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture alongside Greenwood descendant John W. Franklin. I discuss the machinations of the white elite in 1921, Oklahoma’s uniquely egalitarian origins, and gummy worms. We sell out of books, again.

It’s an honor to have in the audience so many descendants of Greenwood icons. I meet the children, grandchildren and great-grands of people like Loula Williams, Mary Jones Parrish, A.J. Smitherman, J.H. Goodwin, and Washington Rucker. Of course I snap photos with all of them.

On Wednesday I make a television appearance on Morning Joe to discuss my book. Rev. Al Sharpton says he looks forward to reading it (!!!). I do an interview with Joy Reid later that night. She asks me to sign a book for her.

On the train to New York on Thursday I sell a book to the woman next to me, as well as to the woman in front of us who was eavesdropping. The eavesdropping woman asks me to sign a scrap of paper and take a picture. My second real “fan” moment on the tour.

At Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, I read a passage from the book about how an innocent teenage boy named Willie Williams had his home destroyed 102 years ago to the day in Tulsa. It’s always vital to remember why I’m on this journey.

The New York event feels like home. Friends from my high school, the University of Alabama, Time, and The Ringer are all with me. I can hear wonderfully familiar laughs every time I crack a joke. Atlantic writer Hannah Giorgis is an awesome interviewer, asking probing questions about the elusive spectre of black capitalism, but also about the coolest people I met. We have the range in our convo, as they say.

At an after party at my friend Charlotte Alter’s apartment in Brooklyn, people have such thoughtful questions about how I crafted this story. One friend asks if it was lonely. It was. But it’s not anymore.

Week 3: Georgia

Looking fresh in Savannah alongside journalist and author Wanda Lloyd

The first thing I do when I get to Atlanta is drive by my old apartment in Grant Park, where I used to sit at my kitchen table at 7 a.m. each morning researching Greenwood. That’s where this journey began.

On Monday about 15 friends gather at a brewery for an impromptu to book signing. It’s great to be with folks I haven’t seen since before the pandemic. Jake and Kim ask me to sign a book for their daughter Nora and their child on the way, Lucy. I think about how long some copies of this book will persist in the world.

On Tuesday Ariel and I have lunch at Pappadeux with members of the Goodwin clan—Greg, his wife Cynthia and his Aunt Jo Ann. No pictures sadly but the spread was mouthwatering. That evening, Greg and I participate in a panel at The Gathering Spot with Black Wall Street Times founder Nehemiah D. Frank and Atlanta journalist Jewel Wicker. A recurrent theme is how the racist headwinds that battered Greenwood hit Atlanta and other black communities too. It’s a serious convo, but we laugh a lot too. Greg manages to let just one expletive fly.

On Wednesday we visit Ariel’s family in Byron, GA, where I sign 25 books and we debate whether the trilling that settles over the front patio after a summer storm is a bird or a tree frog. It’s a peaceful intermission.

In Savannah, 125 people show up to hear me talk about Grewnwood in conversation with Wanda Lloyd, an accomplished Savannah journalist and the former editor of The Montgomery Advertiser, my hometown paper. The crowd erupts when I say we have to cast Denzel for the movie. In the signing line, someone from Oklahoma is already deep into the book and has highlighted a passage from CH16. She tells me my writing is beautiful, and I can tell she means it as she points to the words blazing in yellow on the page. What was once just my work has now become ours.

On Saturday night Ariel and I go see The Little Mermaid, eat at my favorite Savannah restaurant Zunzi’s, then go home and watch old music videos while sipping wine and whiskey. A perfect date night.

Week 4: West Coast

My presentation at Google headquarters in Seattle

A high school friend, Will Ralls, presented me with the amazing opportunity to come speak at Google’s Seattle campus for Juneteenth. I also have a reading planned at Elliott Bay Book Company. I am 2,000 miles from Tulsa. This is my first attempt to share Built From the Fire largely with strangers.

The Elliot Bay event is first, on Tuesday night in a cozy basement event space lined with well-worn books. I wonder whether even a dozen people will show up; I’ve heard too many author book tour horror stories. But more than 30 people fill the seats. I meet an older couple who read my New Yorker coverage of Tulsa and have been following my writing ever since. A black Tulsan who grew up on Greenwood in the 1960s and another who attended Booker T. High School decades later both show up for me. A white woman from Tulsa who suspects her grandfather was in the mob. I can see my half a decade of effort slowly taking on a life of its own.

On Wednesday I visit Pike Place Market with an old Ringer friend, Kjerstin Johnson. One of my absolute favorite places in my travels around the country. We trade new book ideas while drinking ginger beers and ducking between the Byzantine storefronts.

At Google on Thursday, they really got me set up on the stage like I’m about to drop the iPhone Fiftyleven. “Black Bill Gates in the Making,” I text Ariel. Attendance at the event is…light. Maybe this is my first tour horror story. But the few people there are so excited to learn that any anxiety fades away. Will later tells me dozens more employees were watching the live stream, and all the books Google bought were snapped up by curious readers by the end of the day.

More sales numbers are coming in throughout the week. My effort to hit the New York Times Best Seller list failed. In the back of my head I wonder whether taking so much time to craft this work, while missing the recent moments when Greenwood was thrust into the national spotlight, was really the right decision. But another college friend, Teddy Phillips, sets me straight as we cruise through the Seattle streets: “Beauty takes time.”

Week 5 - Homecomings

Me and the Goodwin family in their homeland of Water Valley, MS, alongside our great tour guide Calvin Hawkins

On Tuesday I travel to Oxford, MS to speak at Square Books to speak with writer Ralph Eubanks. The opening chapter of Built From the Fire takes place just 25 miles south in Water Valley, MS, where J.H. and Carlie Goodwin lived before departing for Tulsa in 1914. Goodwin descendants are in the audience as I speak, including two of J.H. and Carlie's grandchildren. Granddaughter Jeanne tells me I have a "gift for gab"--something I never knew until this tour began.

The next day the Goodwin family and I venture to Water Valley and visit the gravesite where some of their ancestors are buried. J.H. Goodwin’s mother Sallie was born a slave in the 1850's Deep South. Her descendants now include attorneys, journalists, entrepreneurs, doctors, educators, and a state legislator. As we say a prayer around Sallie’s grave, holding hands under the brutal Mississippi sun, a cool breeze glides through the cemetery, nuzzling our faces and whispering stories of the life Sallie lived here.

On Thursday more than 100 people come out to hear me speak at the Birmingham Public Library back home in Alabama. Most of them are friends and family who have known me 10, 20, even 30 years. It's the most personal of all my tour stops; Ashley M. Jones, Alabama’s poet laureate, helps me excavate my own past in real time. We talk about how both of us, as black scribes from Alabama, found ourselves writing about the evil buried in the soil of our state and our nation. I searchingly toss out the word "duty" for what we do, but I know that’s not quite right when I say it. Ashley is sharper when she explains, "It’s less for me that I feel obligated but that I just can't help but see."

On Saturday I return to Birmingham for a celebration cookout celebrating hosted by college friends Sarah Hughes and Akira Watson. During a toast, Sarah quotes J.H. Goodwin, the one-time resident of Water Valley, from the book. "What a community contributes to you can be measured only in terms of what you give to that community."

Words to remember as my book tour ends, but the community building this work will inspire is just getting started.