Before writing his book “The Victory of Greenwood,” Carlos Moreno wasn’t sure he was the right person for the task. “I didn’t grow up in Tulsa. I’m not Black — I’m Mexican on both sides of my family,” said Moreno, who hails from Santa Clara, California. “So I really struggled with whether I was anyone who had anything to say about Greenwood.”
A graphic designer by trade, he first heard about Greenwood and the Tulsa Race Massacre in the late 1990s when he moved from Silicon Valley to Tulsa. Looking for work, he took on some projects for Greenwood clients. It was through relationships that he made, including community elders, that he began to learn about the history in “bits and pieces,” he said. “The story just stuck with me,” Moreno said, adding that what turned his growing interest into a passion was when he designed an Oklahoma Eagle special issue about the 2001 Tulsa Race Riot Commission report. He began collecting “books, articles, documentaries, anything and everything I could get my hands on about Greenwood.”
But it wasn’t until more recently — inspired by the interracial mission of his church, All Souls Unitarian — that “the idea started gelling more about how I could contribute to this conversation.” The result was the book, which is being published through All Souls and will be available online and in local bookstores in time for the centennial. The work is Moreno’s attempt to help readers go beyond the massacre, focusing on the pivotal figures who rebuilt the community.
“Often we look at Greenwood as a subject of pity, and that’s all it ever was or is or will be,” he said. “This horrible thing happened, but it’s not the only thing that defines Greenwood.”
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