Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America

Amazon Editors' Pick - Best History Books of May

We all feel it, the teetering toward a place in America from which there is no return. The battle to remain hopeful in spite of injustice after injustice. In this powerful story of one lawyer’s fight for his community, both justice and hope are redeemed.

The Greenwood neighborhood of North Tulsa was once a promised land for African Americans, deemed “Black Wall Street.” But on May 31, 1921, the deadliest race massacre in U.S. history sent Greenwood up in flames. At the time, Lessie Randle was just a child running to safety as bullets ricocheted around her. Almost a century later, lawyer Damario Solomon-Simmons knocks on her door asking if she’d be willing to run toward justice this time.

In Redeem a Nation, we follow Solomon-Simmons’s fight for justice, from the courtrooms of Tulsa to our nation’s capital, representing three centenarians: the last survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Documenting a race against the calendar and the courts, Redeem a Nation grapples with the truth about corruption and disenfranchisement in America through this historic legal case for reparations and the deeply moving stories of survivors and descendants of the Massacre.

Yet this isn’t just a story of Tulsa. The community is a microcosm of the continued harm America inflicts through racial violence and economic injustice. The damage of generational poverty and loss of opportunity isn’t some relic of the past. It is happening right now. Redeem a Nation offers a way forward for communities across the nation through systemic change and community love. The time is now to resist, repair, and redeem a land once promised.

“You think we can win?” Randle asked that day. This story is Solomon-Simmons’s answer.