Angel Of Greenwood

Friday, May 20, 1921: 11 Days Before

Sixteen-year-old Isaiah Hill reads alone in his bedroom. His father died in World War I, and since then, Isaiah has been writing and reading a lot. Out the window, he sees a group of white boys congregating on the far side of the train tracks near his house. He can tell they’re looking for trouble and wonders if they’re involved with the Ku Klux Klan, which is active in the Tulsa area. Then, Isaiah notices a local girl, Angel Hill, walking alone and carrying some crutches. Isaiah is sure the boys will cause trouble for Angel, and he considers interfering but is too afraid to do so. Instead, Isaiah watches out his window as the boys take her crutches, and she runs away. They then break the crutches on the train tracks.

Saturday, May 21, 1921; 10 Days Before

At home, Angel helps her mother prepare for the arrival of the three Barney sisters, some children whose hair Angel’s mother fixes. Angel hasn’t told her parents she bought the crutches using money she saved from helping her mom braid hair or that the white boys destroyed them. She wonders why they did it and what makes them so angry. The Barney sisters arrive, and Angel gets them to sit still by promising to perform a puppet show once their braids are finished. Angel is good at conversing with young children.

Sunday, May 22, 1921; 9 Days Before

Isaiah attends Sunday school with his mother in addition to regular church. This makes for a long morning, and he wishes he were reading W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk instead. When he was younger, he loved Booker T. Washington, but now he prefers Du Bois because of his more active, seemingly faster approach to revolution. Isaiah starts transcribing passages from Du Bois’s book until his mother fusses at him to pay attention and claims Du Bois is counterproductive. The congregation gives testimonials, and then the choir sings. He sees Angel Hill dancing and thinks she is so incredible that he wants to cry.

Monday, May 23, 1921; 8 Days Before

On the penultimate day of school, Angel waits on her porch in the morning but hears the next-door neighbor’s baby, Michael, crying. She goes next door to Mrs. Nichelle, whose husband, Mr. Anniston, is the vice principal, and offers to help with the baby so she can have a break. She goes to the bathroom while Angel consoles Michael to sleep. She takes a walk with the baby and passes by Mrs. Tate, a woman with an impressive juniper bush.

Isaiah is in love with Angel but feels like he’s not allowed to just fall peacefully in love the way a white person could because of impending revolution or invasion. He acutely feels W. E. B. Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness,” as if there are two versions of him, one watching and judging the other based on racialized expectations. Isaiah’s best friend, Muggy, appears and starts talking about a girl he likes, Dorothy Mae. Isaiah has been kissing this girl but doesn’t actually like her romantically. Isaiah also doesn’t like Muggy that much, but he keeps hanging out with him because he feels indebted due to the help he and his mother received from Muggy’s father’s lucrative butcher business after his father died. Isaiah tries talking to Muggy about Du Bois, but Muggy claims Greenwood is safe from things like revolution and invasion and doesn’t want to hear any more about it.

Angel continues walking with baby Michael and getting stopped by more neighbors, such as Mr. Morris, who owned a woodshop before retiring. Greenwood is a close-knit community where the residents all know each other. The community is thriving, with many successful businesses and friendly neighbors. Angel feels grateful for Greenwood and believes its existence—segregated from white Tulsa but thriving—is proof that Booker T. Washington was right that it’s possible to have a Black community that’s segregated but still prospering.

Angel stops at the drugstore to get a soda. Dr. Owens attempts to speak to her, but she doesn’t want to discuss her father’s illness, which she’s kept secret from most people in town but not the doctor. She cuts their conversation short, leaves the drug store, and returns home with baby Michael. Her father isn’t worried about Angel skipping the first half of the penultimate school day because she was babysitting the vice principal’s baby. She drops the baby back off to Mrs. Nichelle, then walks toward school, meditating on Washington and Du Bois. She prefers Washington because his approach is more palatable and less potentially destructive, but still, she questions whether there can really be a “thriving” community if it’s still racially segregated.

Muggy wants to skip class and smoke a cigar, and although Isaiah was looking forward to taking a Latin test so he could ace it, Muggy convinces him to skip. Muggy got the cigar from his father, who brought it back from “vacation” (that’s what he calls trips he takes to cheat on Muggy’s mother). Everyone in town gossips about Muggy’s father’s cheating but still frequents his butcher shop. Everybody feels bad for Muggy’s mom, but she doesn’t say anything about it and keeps her head held high. Normally, Muggy seems to like his father in an uncomplicated way, but now, his attitude seems to be changing. Isaiah keeps getting distracted, and Muggy asks what he’s thinking about, but Isaiah won’t admit he’s thinking about Angel.

On her way to school, Angel encounters Deacon Yancey on his porch. He invites her for tea. He’s older, and his wife passed away the previous year. Sitting on Deacon Yancey’s porch, in the distance, Angel sees Muggy and Isaiah by the bleachers at their school. Isaiah and Muggy have been bullying Angel at school for years, so she tries to avoid them. She was surprised the previous Sunday when Isaiah clapped for her at church. She thinks maybe he just pretends to be mean to impress his friends, but that this isn’t much better than actually being mean.

Deacon Yancey misses his wife, and now that she’s gone, he realizes everything she did that he never noticed or appreciated before. Angel worries about how she’ll feel if her dad dies soon. She doesn’t know what to say to comfort Deacon Yancey, so she asks him about Isaiah to change the subject. Deacon Yancey says Isaiah is bad news, and Angel should steer clear of him. Isaiah waves at Angel, and Deacon Yancey tells her not to wave back. Muggy also slaps Isaiah as if telling him to stop waving.

Muggy asks why Isaiah was waving at Angel. Isaiah gets distracted watching Angel and ignores Muggy, who then asks if Isaiah has a crush on Angel. Isaiah feels like he can’t do anything that would displease Muggy because Muggy’s family has more money than his and has shared with them in the past. Therefore, he always goes along with the mischief that Muggy plans, bullying other kids. Isaiah claims Angel is ugly, which seems to convince Muggy that Isaiah does not have a crush on her. They go inside the school.

Isaiah is glad to go to English class because he loves reading and writing and because Muggy isn’t in that class. His teacher, Miss Ferris, has been supportive of his writing. During class, he writes a love poem about Angel in his notebook. After class, Miss Ferris asks to speak to him. She reads the poem and tells Isaiah he’s in love and is a poet. Angel appears, and Miss Ferris says she wants to speak to both of them.