The Filling Station, Vivian Miller, author; Angel Pean, Thomas Nelson, narrators
The time is 1921. The place is Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On the night of May 31st, a race riot began. The father of Evelyn and Margaret Justice went missing. The two girls ran for their lives as did many others like them, who were not as successful. They found a safe haven at the filling station of Mr. Allen and Mrs. Alberta. The Justice family was appropriately named, because this book is about nothing, if not the necessity to achieve justice, justice for all of those innocent victims of the racial hate and violence unjustly inflicted upon the community of Greenwood.
Margaret had graduated from College and Evelyn was graduating from High School and planning to attend the School of Design, in New York, but on May 31st, all of their bright dreams for their future turned into nightmares. Instead of rehearsing for the graduation, they were trying to escape the madness occurring around them. People were being gunned down, homes were set ablaze, their community was being destroyed. Terrified and exhausted, hungry and thirsty, in clothes that had become rags, they stumbled upon the filling station and finally found safety with Mr. Allen and Mrs. Alberta. This filling station was known as a safe place for their kind. Mrs. Alberta, the mother of four children and pregnant with her fifth, embraced them, offering them food, shelter, kindness and love. Margaret and Evelyn could not find safety in many places. They were black, and they were in danger outside their safety zone in their hometown of Greenwood.
This community was built on land that no one else seemed to want. These resourceful people created a safe haven that was thriving and that offered them a secure place to live where they were not threatened by their enemies. Greenwood was a self-contained town that was filled with successful and upwardly mobile residents. They had everything they needed within their community. There were restaurants, libraries, churches, and newspapers. They did not often leave the environs of Greenwood, unless it was during the day.
When a male in the community was arrested, he was automatically presumed guilty by the white community surrounding Greenwood. This male was accused of touching a white woman inappropriately and rumors of a coming lynching rose up. The Klan was active. Fear raced through Greenwood and plans to protect the accused were hatched. Several residents armed themselves so he could not be removed from custody. Then the white community erupted in fury when they were thwarted in their attempt to seek their own kind of justice. They unleashed horror upon Greenwood and its residents. They gunned down people, including the town doctor, in cold blood, when he surrendered to them. After murdering so many, they burned the town to the ground. As monstrous as that tragedy was, it grew worse when the powers that be blamed the victims for the disaster wrought upon them by the racists. Insurance companies refused to pay them so they could rebuild. There was no help coming except for very minor aid from the Red Cross. They were very much on their own.
Through the eyes of the fictionalized characters of Margaret and Evelyn, we learn about what might have happened during that very real tragic night, and then we learn about what happened afterward as they struggled to make their phoenix rise from the ashes again. In the novel, there are some Red Cross records, newspaper articles and correspondence cited, but if more information is desired, the author has provided a way to access it at the end of the book. Greenwood was a real and thriving utopian town for those who lived there. It was populated by blacks who were upwardly mobile, church-going and G-d-fearing Americans. They were entrepreneurs who built homes and businesses there. There were clothing stores, restaurants, movie theaters, ice cream shops, cleaners, doctors and lawyers and whatever else a community needed to make it self-sustaining. In the period from May 31st to June 1st, 1921, the world of Greenwood came to an end, but these brave, resourceful people summoned what strength they could, and they fought the system and refused to be defeated. In the midst of their grief and nightmares, left to their own devices, they defied their enemies. They rebuilt their town on their own, overcoming all of the obstacles deliberately thrown in their way. The events of 1921 should have been recorded in the annals of history and taught to students in every school so that the real history of racism was exposed. Instead of receiving justice, the event appears to have been distorted and hidden by the very folks who engineered it, perhaps the Ku Klux Klan or perhaps just the racists of the time, the white community that feared and resented the very existence of Greenwood and its residents.
This author has shone a light on a moment in history that is not only shameful, but it is still largely unresolved. Reparations for all that was lost were never provided. Those who were directly harmed by that riot and its destruction surely deserved some justice in the courts, for those who were guilty and some recompense from the insurance companies that they had diligently paid for a service never rendered. What I also found most disturbing, however, was how little has been learned from history, especially by those harmed the most. Many in this same demographic are today supporting the harm of other innocent people, the people in Israel. They demonstrate and march to support the terrorists who brought death and destruction to communities in Israel, communities that only desired to work with their enemies to bring about peace. They support the cold-blooded murderers who entered and murdered, pillaged and destroyed everything in their path, taking innocent hostages with them as they left. They tortured and murdered many of them. This same population, that was so egregiously harmed almost a century ago, is now also joined by many of their former enemies in supporting the hateful behavior toward Jews that occurred on October 7th 2023, in Israel, and yet this event could easily be compared to the one on May 31st and June 1st of 1921, a century ago. I ask myself, how is this possible?
In this book, you may not like the characters behavior, you may think it was really written for the young adult and not the general population, but no matter what you think, the ultimate message must be that this incident should be exposed and that justice should finally be served. We must learn to live together wherever we are and with whomever is living there. If only this could be so.