Dreamland Burning

“It never did cross my narrow little mind that I should worry about Clarence Banks, or be bothered by the fact that I’d just unleashed the full force and fury of Tulsa’s crooked police element on a Negro.”

Will’s fury at Clarence is largely about jealousy because Clarence is with the girl Will loves. Will is also privileged. His naivete, which no member of the black community shares, is what gets Clarence killed. To Will, the police are there to protect citizens and uphold the law. To Clarence, the police are dangerous.

“I’m guessing whoever killed this guy wasn’t interested in bragging about it. They wanted him erased, like he never even existed.”

When Rowan says this about the skeleton, she assumes a white supremacist killed a black person as if he were nothing. Even after the truth is revealed, her observation proves correct. Will wasn’t proud of killing Vernon Fish, even though Vernon was violent, dangerous, and needed to be removed from society. The anonymous burial was poetic justice for all of the African Americans Vernon murdered and left to rot anonymously.

“A sale’s a sale, William. Things are hard now, what with crude oil prices so low. If a Negro comes to me with money in his pocket, I’ll hold my nose and sell him a Victrola, Jim Crow be damned.”

Stan Tillman sounds like he is rebelling against Jim Crow when he says this to his son, but what he’s really saying is that he’ll do anything for money and his financial interests. He proves that this is true much later in the novel when he joins the Ku Klux Klan over fear for his store.

“I mean, I knew it was a cold case, but the way they acted, the skeleton might as well have been a forgotten ice cube at the back of the freezer.”

Rowan is unimpressed with the police disinterest in the skeleton under the house, which spurs Rowan to start her own investigation. She knows that the police won’t put any effort into the case, and she is determined to give the dead person a name and figure out who killed him.

“Though he didn’t say so, he knew perfectly well that Mama’s Osage roots ran deeper into the soil under our feet than his or Vernon’s, either one, making her about as exotic as an Oklahoma redbud tree.”

Vernon tries to insult Stan by calling Kathryn “exotic.” As Will describes, Kathryn Tillman was native. Oklahoma belonged to her people before any of them set foot there. It’s notable that Will is imagining the words that his father would use to defend his mother with no indication that Stan wants to defend her at all. In the first half of the novel, Will frequently romanticizes his father, making it more surprising when Stan joins the Klan.

“Cops got ways of keeping the courthouse from getting too clogged up, see, and sometimes good citizens like me help ‘em.”

Vernon describes with pride how he took part in and enjoyed beating Clarence. Vernon brags that the police not only allow vigilante justice but appreciate the assistance. This foreshadows the white mob that wants to lynch Dick Rowland, and the resulting anger and aggression toward the black citizens of Greenwood.

“I smiled and thanked him and told him that sounded great, because even though working at a medical clinic in the part of town voted most likely to get you shot hadn’t been on my summer bucket list, at least it was something. Maybe even something I could get a decent essay out of.”

Rowan’s thought process reeks of privilege. She sees the clinic as an opportunity to advance her own interests and thinks that this experience will give her credibility and prove that she doesn’t live in a “rich girl bubble.” Ironically, this will turn out to be true but not for the reasons that she expects.

“They say you’re the kind of man who believes every home should be filled with music.”

Joseph says this to Stan to flatter him and convince him to sell him a Victrola. While Stan seems to appreciate the compliment, at least through Will’s eyes, it’s really Will who thinks about music this way.

“I watched her go, thinking how very straight her back was, how her shoulders never slumped and her head stayed high. And I wondered how it was that a girl most of the world thought so little of could carry herself so proud.”

While looking at Ruby, Will marvels at the very quality that Vernon and other white supremacists want to stamp out. Ruby is a girl who refuses to listen when she is told that she is worthless because she knows that she is smart, confident, and brave. Will’s observation foreshadows his eventual realization that all African Americans are humans with worth.

“What you’re looking at, boy, is the bona fide, real and true, Ku Klux Klan regalia worn by God-fearing patriots across this great land of ours.”

Vernon voices the central belief of the Ku Klux Klan. While most people recognize them as terrorists, the members of the KKK truly believe that they are the most patriotic Americans who have ever existed. To Vernon, acceptance by the Klan validates his whiteness.

“But the truth is, I didn’t stop because even though Arvin seemed harmless and sweet in the clinic, he made me nervous out on the street.”

Rowan will be particularly hard on herself later when she thinks about this moment. On the one hand, it illustrates her privilege because she thinks that it makes her more civilized than Arvin. On the other hand, Rowan never explores the fact that, as a young woman, refusing to stop her car for an older man who she has met once at work is not entirely unreasonable. This moment is valuable because it is when she realizes that she truly is privileged.

“Silence sucked all the oxygen out of the air between us, until it finally got so bad that I blurted out, ‘I never meant for him to die.’ ‘But you never meant for him not to,’ Addie replied.”

Addie’s response to Will’s comment accuses Will of indifference. Will might not have imagined that Clarence would end up dead, but he also hadn’t cared either way. This is a turning point for Will, who doesn’t want anyone to die on his account.

“Well, if ‘exciting’ means drama and people dying and doctors and nurses rushing around like in the movies, then no. It wasn’t. But if it means doing something that seems small now but can make a big difference in the long run, then it was.”

After spending the day shadowing Dr. Woods, Rowan is surprised to learn that she enjoys helping people in small ways as they deal with average issues in their lives. Often the small thing is all one can do, and this sentiment echoes later when she decides to speak to the district attorney about Arvin. It’s only one death and one potential indictment, but small things add up.

“The Tulsa sky can turn on you quick. One minute you’re rolling up your sleeves under the wide-open blue, the next you’re dodging raindrops and hailstones and tornadoes.”

Although Will is referring to literal weather, his observation is ominous and foreshadows the riot. When Dick Rowland is accused of assaulting Sarah Page, the “weather” changes in Tulsa in an instant. Suddenly what was safe is dangerous, and Will and his friends are fighting for their lives.

“It’s history, Ro. The messy kind where truth gets stretched out over thousands of written stories. We don’t know how many people died, or even if we should call it a race riot. Riot is convenient, and it’s what most people use. But it isn’t right.”

Rowan’s mother is attempting to explain how history is subjective. “Riot” is a loaded word, suggesting that the black people were rising up and causing chaos. Every person who lives a historical event has a different narrative, and this is especially true when the two sides are so divided.

“The lives that ended that night mattered. It was a mistake for this city to try to forget, and it’s an even bigger one to pretend everything’s fine now. Black men and women are dying today for the same reasons they did in 1921. And we have to call that out, Rowan. Every single time.”

Isis’ statement ends the first part of the book. She is both highlighting the important issue that no matter what we know about the history or whether we ever learn the names of everyone who died, every single one was a human being with a life that mattered. It’s also important that she connects those deaths to the people who are still dying today because of racism. She foreshadows Arvin’s death, which will occur in Rowan’s next chapter.

“Which made me feel sick all over again as I realized that Ruby knew better than me what was going on. She always had.”

Will describes how Ruby understands things that no child should have to understand. To protect herself, Ruby must know exactly how horrifying racism and racial violence can be. Will realizes in this moment that racialize violence steals black childhood.

“And I stood there with my gun in my hands, frozen with fear and numbed by a sudden, overwhelming awareness of just how fragile the life I knew really was.”

Will is alone in his father’s shop when he hears gunshots and realizes that every single one might mean that someone’s life has ended. When his father ordered him to get his gun, the idea of killing was abstract. Thinking about an entire life ending with the movement of his finger makes the danger of the situation real.

“Won’t be any colored folk dancing in Tulsa tomorrow night.”

Joseph tells Will that his high school’s prom was meant to be the following night. Before the riot and the danger started, Joseph was only preoccupied with the fact that the girl he was in love with turned down his invitation to take her to the dance. They have just seen Gideon, the boy who Joseph was rejected for, and Joseph knows that either he or Gideon could be murdered tonight. The prom represents normalcy, something that has been upset forever. 

“School, the country club, Utica Square, the Brady—most of the places I went, I stood out. Yes, Dad was white, but Mom wasn’t. Which meant that to the rest of the world I was black. At Mama Rays, I wasn’t the awkward line in a poem. I fit the meter. I rhymed.”

Rowan has grown accustomed to being one of only a couple of black people in any given room and is surprised to feel a sense of belonging at Arvin’s funeral. As a mixed-race person, it would seem like she should belong with both white people and black people. However, the social history of the United States has always treated any blackness as a quality that compromises whiteness. Therefore, Rowan is always an outsider in white spaces.

“Music opened up space where there wasn’t any, and lit up skies inside you that ceilings couldn’t hold in”

When Will sees the Goodhopes’ house, he understands why Joseph really wanted a Victrola. Music has the ability to make one feel open and free. For a small house and a poor family, music is an escape, especially for a black family whose lives and freedom are repeatedly limited.

“I’ve spent my whole life forgiving white folks, Will. […] And I am so very tired of it.”

Joseph points a rifle at the injured man who screams abuse and racial slurs at him. The man has almost certainly shot African Americans tonight with that rifle, and it would be easy to pull the trigger. No one but Will would know, and Will has chosen to stand by him and let him make his own decision. Joseph lets him live, but he demonstrates the justifiable anger of oppression.

“It means I should have checked under the floor sooner. But it also means we know more now than we did before. And in my book, that makes it a good day.”

Geneva has looked under the floorboards and found new blood evidence, but what Rowan desperately wants is a narrative and a solution. Geneva, however, suggests that all knowledge is a good thing.