Last month, long-time Tulsa World reporter Randy Krehbiel published a new book about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. It's a follow-up to a book published in 2019 that also deals with the massacre. Krehbiel sat down with KWGS' Elizabeth Caldwell to talk about his work. Listen above to the interview or read a transcript below.
ELIZABETH CALDWELL: Welcome to the studio, Randy.
RANDY KREHBIEL: Thanks for having me.
CALDWELL: So you've written two books about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which is described as, you know, one of the worst occasions of racial violence in the history of the country. And both of your books deal with the past, but the first one a little bit more. Is that fair to say?
KREHBIEL: Sure.
CALDWELL: And, yeah, what, I thought maybe you could talk about the processes of of writing those two different books.
KREHBIEL: Sure. So the first one was "Tulsa, 1921," and that was basically taking all the the the material that I had gathered over 20 something years of working on that and putting it into a narrative. So "1921" is pretty much, as it says, about 1921. "2021" is about, all the, everything that happened essentially in 2020 and 2021 in Tulsa with the centennial of the race massacre as the kind of the the backdrop.
CALDWELL: What was the the difference in information gathering that you had to do?
KREHBIEL: Oh, well, of course, well, I wasn't around for 1921, although some people think I might have been. But I've been, I've reached that age. But, so, in "1921," I depended a lot on contemporary accounts, mainly news stories, but not entirely. And then there were some interviews with people who were around then, that were done later. And I used a lot of records and that sort of thing.
With "2021," of course, I lived through that and but I used again, I depended pretty heavily on news accounts because I'm a news guy. And so what I tried to do was use a a a variety of of sources, including, you know, KWGS. I used stuff that y'all reported and then interviews with with people, the mayor and and others. What I was trying to do was, at least in part, was point out what what's changed and what hasn't. But also just how that period really was so stressful, and it brought to the surface a lot of the strains in our community.
CALDWELL: Yeah. And you said that you were actually reluctant to write the second book because it was so tense. So what happened to actually make you wanna do it or do it?
KREHBIEL: Yeah. That's a, that's a good question.
I, you know, I was, convinced, someone convinced me that it would be worth, putting in the record, so to speak. And I guess I have kind of a compulsion to put things in the record. I, many years ago when I went off to college, I thought I was probably gonna wind up being a history teacher. And I tell people I fell in with the wrong people and wound up working at newspapers instead. But I really fell in.
I really bought into the idea and continue to buy into the idea of news as the first rough draft of history. And really, local news is like the community diary, you know. It tells you what was important that day, and everything from what the weather was like to what people were most interested in.
CALDWELL: So you just couldn't stop yourself, basically.
KREHBIEL: I guess that's true.
CALDWELL: Yeah. Well, who who convinced you? Was it a friend or a public...?
KREHBIEL: Well, you know, it was it was an editor at OU Press, and he was looking, we were looking, we were talking about possible projects, and I actually had some other ideas, and he wasn't as interested in those. And I just started talking about, you know, everything that had gone on here because it really was a pretty remarkable period in there, where we had so many things going on, and they were all, seems like they were all stressful.
You had COVID. You had two presidential visits, which for Tulsa is a pretty big deal, and and one of them was especially, I think, stressful. We had a lot of what you might call social activism or at least for Tulsa.
So we've almost forgotten it now, but there was a lot of discussion about policing reform and there was a lot of tension over some of the, law enforcement involved shootings that we had over a period of years. There was social unrest nationally, and some of that showed up here. Although, you know, actually, we came through that, pretty well.
We had a little bit of disturbance. I think some people, were very afraid that we were going to have a lot of it, especially when President Trump said he was going to go to Greenwood on Juneteenth.
And I think, you know and that's actually one of the things I talked about was, you know, the two the really different perceptions of that and how some of the people making decisions at that time did not comprehend why that might be a problem.
CALDWELL: Right. And when I saw you speak at Fulton Books, you said, access to information, you know, and talking about power, and who gets to tell a story is power, and it is a particular kind of power.
So why did you think that you were the best person or a person, I guess, to tell this story?
KREHBIEL: I would say it's more a person. I don't know that I'm the best person. But nobody else seemed to wanna do it, so I did it. I mean, it's kind of that way with "1921" too. And with anything I write, whether it's a news story or a book, I don't think of it as as the last word on something at all. I just hope that it it kind of furthers the discussion a little bit.
CALDWELL: I mean, I was there for a lot of what you write about in the book, but there's a level of detail in the book that you couldn't get it in the news, you know.
KREHBIEL: Right. Well, it was all happening and and, you know, even I'd kind of forgotten about some of the things that had happened or maybe wasn't even aware of them. One of the things I learned, when I was working on 1921 was that sometimes you can read the same news story two or three times before you really understand the subtext, or there are things that you didn't quite pick out the first couple of times you read it. And, in going back over, even things that happened a few years ago, there were elements of it that I didn't understand the first time or I didn't pick up on the first time.
And I think that's one of the reasons why we really need to pay attention to history, even recent history, maybe especially recent history. You know, and I still see it every day. I cover the Oklahoma Legislature some and, the disconnect between, the different perspectives in our in our Legislature is really pretty remarkable.
CALDWELL: So what what's next for you?
KREHBIEL: You know, that's a good question.
I don't really have it as far as the book, I don't really have anything specific in mind. I'm just trying to get through this legislative session, and then maybe I'll think about what what's next. I know we've got some projects coming up, at the Tulsa World and I'll probably be involved in some of those. I think we're doing something on the anniversary of Route 66, and there's some things that we've we've got going on.
CALDWELL: Well, it's good to hear from you. Thanks for coming in, Randy.
KREHBIEL: Alright. Thanks.
BEN ABRAMS, HOST: That was veteran Tulsa World journalist Randy Krehbiel speaking with KWGS' Elizabeth Caldwell about his new book, "Tulsa, 1921," published last month.
