National Geographic Sheds Light on the 1921 Tulsa Massacre With the New Documentary "Red Summer" Coming in June

National Geographic has announced a new documentary, Red Summer, shedding light on the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, with producer and director Dawn Porter (Good Trouble: John Lewis), Trailblazer Studios, and Washington Post journalist DeNeen Brown as a contributing reporter.

What’s Happening:

National Geographic announced a new documentary film with the current working title, Red Summer.
The film will shed light on the intense racial conflict of the Tulsa Massacre which occurred in 1921 and lead to the murder of 300 Black people and left as many as 10,000 homeless and displaced.
Tulsa native and Washington Post journalist DeNeen Brown will dig into the events that lead to the Tulsa Massacre uncovering new insights.
The two-hour documentary will premiere in June on National Geographic.

More on DeNeen Brown from National Geographic:

“The first to revive the call for justice for victims and survivors in a 2018 article, Brown is uniquely placed to explore today’s new Civil Rights Movement in the context of the Tulsa Massacre and the Red Summer. With inside access to family members of those killed, law enforcement, archeologists, and historians, Brown makes sense of the science and the politics intertwined throughout the search for Tulsa’s mass grave. Leaving no stone unturned, Red Summer also untangles the role the media played in covering events at the time in order to reveal the full extent of the nation’s buried past.”

What They’re Saying:

Dawn Porter, Producer, Director: “This story has been a century in the making, but it took DeNeen’s powerful call to action for the city of Tulsa and wider American community to fully realize the necessity of unearthing the truth about this massacre. As a filmmaker, following the evidence where it leads and giving a voice to those directly affected by the Red Summer’s tragic events is an incredibly delicate undertaking. There is so much our society is currently reckoning with, but seeking the truth about the damage wrought by unchecked and unsanctioned mob violence against the Black community, is a starting point to acknowledge these wrongs and make room for healing to take place.”
DeNeen Brown, Journalist: “There is an urgency here to not only properly honor those who were murdered and bring comfort to their surviving family members but also for my hometown of Tulsa, and countless others, to acknowledge and address the ways in which Black citizens have been denied protections and opportunities. We find ourselves at a true inflection point this year, and if we can learn from the past and bring justice to those who had none until now, perhaps we can all find peace.”