Melville House is crashing a trade paperback edition of the Department of Justice’s just-released report on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The January 17 report found that the massacre, in which hundreds of Black Oklahomans were killed and Tulsa's "Black Wall Street" was set ablaze, was the result of a "systematic and coordinated" attack by white assailants that "transcended mere mob violence"—a reversal of the contemporaneous federal report that blamed the incident on a riot started by Black citizens.
“It’s important that there be print copies—not just digital copies—of such historic documents, to help preserve them, and disseminate them as widely as possible into schools and libraries and bookstores,” explained Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson. Melville House said that it hoped to have the book on shelves by mid February.
Melville House has previously published editions of government reports with success. In 2019, it released the The Mueller Report as its first mass market paperback title, and, earlier this month, announced that it would crash a trade paperback edition of The Jack Smith Report, which will publish on February 11.
