Karlos K. Hill is a historian and author working to advance public understanding of racial violence and memory through scholarship, education, and community engagement.
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Photographs taken during and after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre document the scale of the violence against Greenwood, reveal how white participants framed the destruction, and shape how this history is understood today.
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Karlos K. Hill is a historian, author, and professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he serves as Chair of African and African American Studies. His scholarship focuses on the history and legacy of racial violence in the United States, with particular attention to lynching, collective memory, and the ways visual and narrative records shape public understanding of the past.
Hill is the author of three widely recognized works: Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which examines how lynching shaped Black cultural expression and collective memory; The Murder of Emmett Till: A Graphic History (Oxford University Press, 2020), which presents the story of Emmett Till through a visual and accessible format; and The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021), which analyzes the extensive photographic record of the massacre and its role in documenting and interpreting one of the most destructive episodes of racial violence in U.S. history.
In addition to his academic research and writing, Hill is deeply engaged in public history and education. He founded the Tulsa Race Massacre Oklahoma Teacher’s Institute to support the teaching of the 1921 massacre to middle and high school students, helping to bring this history into classrooms and public discourse. His work bridges scholarly research and public engagement, aiming to make complex historical narratives accessible and relevant to broader audiences.
Hill has been featured as an expert in national media and public history projects, including documentaries and coverage by major outlets such as 'Time, USA Today, and CNN, where he provides historical context on racial violence and its contemporary implications. He also contributes to ongoing efforts to advance historical understanding and racial reconciliation through his involvement with organizations such as the Clara Luper Legacy Committee and the Board of Scholars for Facing History and Ourselves.
Across his scholarship, teaching, and public engagement, Hill’s work is driven by a commitment to confronting difficult histories, centering the experiences of Black victims and survivors, and examining how the past continues to shape present-day conversations about justice, memory, and accountability.Publications by this author
A Graphic History
Co-authors: Dave Dodson | Oxford University Press | July | 2020
Incorporating the latest research, The Murder of Emmett Till is the first text to present this shocking crime--which still powerfully reverberates--in a graphic history format. Historian Karlos Hill and illustrator Dave Dodson provide a riveting narration of the events surrounding the murder of young Emmett Till in a graphic format. Hill's meticulous research provides readers with both the context to place the crime in its wider historical setting and the primary sources to analyze the case in detail. Suggestions for how to effectively use the graphic history in the classroom make The Murder of Emmett Till an ideal text for courses in American and African American history.
The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory
Cambridge University Press | October | 2016
Beyond the Rope is an interdisciplinary study that draws on narrative theory and cultural studies methodologies to trace African Americans' changing attitudes and relationships to lynching over the 20th century. Whereas African Americans are typically framed as victims of white lynch mob violence in both scholarly and public discourses, Karlos K. Hill reveals that in the late 19th and early 2oth centuries African Americans lynched other African Americans in response to alleged criminality, and that 20th-century Black writers envisaged African American lynch victims as exemplars of heroic manhood. By illuminating the submerged histories of Black vigilantism and consolidating narratives of lynching in African American literature that framed Black victims of white lynch mob violence as heroic, Hill argues that rather than being static and one dimensional, African American attitudes towards lynching and the lynched black evolved in response to changing social and political contexts.
- Argues that African American attitudes toward lynching and the lynched Black body have evolved in relationship to changing social and political contexts
- Draws on a wide variety of sources, including literature and oral histories, to explain African Americans' evolving attitudes toward lynching
- Documents the understudied history of Black vigilantism and its relationship to broader trends in U.S. society
Historian and Black Studies professor Karlos K. Hill presents a range of photographs taken before, during, and after the massacre, mostly by white photographers. Some of the images are published here for the first time. Comparing these photographs to those taken elsewhere in the United States of lynchings, the author makes a powerful case for terming the 1921 outbreak not a riot but a massacre. White civilians, in many cases assisted or condoned by local and state law enforcement, perpetuated a systematic and coordinated attack on Black Tulsans and their property.
Despite all the violence and devastation, Black Tulsans rebuilt the Greenwood District brick by brick. By the mid-20th century, Greenwood had reached a new zenith, with nearly 250 Black-owned and Black-operated businesses. Today the citizens of Greenwood, with support from the broader community, continue to work diligently to revive the neighborhood once known as “Black Wall Street.” As a result, Hill asserts, the most important legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre is the grit and resilience of the Black survivors of racist violence.
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History offers a perspective largely missing from other accounts. At once captivating and disturbing, it will embolden readers to confront the uncomfortable legacy of racial violence in U.S. history.