We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power
“An important part of American history told with a clear-eyed and forceful brilliance.” —National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson
“We Refuse to Forget reminds readers, on damn near every page, that we are collectively experiencing a brilliance we've seldom seen or imagined…We Refuse to Forget is a new standard in book-making.” —Kiese Laymon, author of the bestselling Heavy: An American Memoir
A landmark work of untold American history that reshapes our understanding of identity, race, and belonging
In We Refuse to Forget, award-winning journalist Caleb Gayle tells the extraordinary story of the Creek Nation, a Native tribe that two centuries ago both owned slaves and accepted Black people as full citizens. Thanks to the efforts of Creek leaders like Cow Tom, a Black Creek citizen who rose to become chief, the U.S. government recognized Creek citizenship in 1866 for its Black members. Yet this equality was shredded in the 1970s when tribal leaders revoked the citizenship of Black Creeks, even those who could trace their history back generations—even to Cow Tom himself.
Why did this happen? How was the U.S. government involved? And what are Cow Tom’s descendants and other Black Creeks doing to regain their citizenship? These are some of the questions that Gayle explores in this provocative examination of racial and ethnic identity. By delving into the history and interviewing Black Creeks who are fighting to have their citizenship reinstated, he lays bare the racism and greed at the heart of this story. We Refuse to Forget is an eye-opening account that challenges our preconceptions of identity as it shines new light on the long shadows of white supremacy and marginalization that continue to hamper progress for Black Americans.
“We Refuse to Forget reminds readers, on damn near every page, that we are collectively experiencing a brilliance we've seldom seen or imagined…We Refuse to Forget is a new standard in book-making.” —Kiese Laymon, author of the bestselling Heavy: An American Memoir
A landmark work of untold American history that reshapes our understanding of identity, race, and belonging
In We Refuse to Forget, award-winning journalist Caleb Gayle tells the extraordinary story of the Creek Nation, a Native tribe that two centuries ago both owned slaves and accepted Black people as full citizens. Thanks to the efforts of Creek leaders like Cow Tom, a Black Creek citizen who rose to become chief, the U.S. government recognized Creek citizenship in 1866 for its Black members. Yet this equality was shredded in the 1970s when tribal leaders revoked the citizenship of Black Creeks, even those who could trace their history back generations—even to Cow Tom himself.
Why did this happen? How was the U.S. government involved? And what are Cow Tom’s descendants and other Black Creeks doing to regain their citizenship? These are some of the questions that Gayle explores in this provocative examination of racial and ethnic identity. By delving into the history and interviewing Black Creeks who are fighting to have their citizenship reinstated, he lays bare the racism and greed at the heart of this story. We Refuse to Forget is an eye-opening account that challenges our preconceptions of identity as it shines new light on the long shadows of white supremacy and marginalization that continue to hamper progress for Black Americans.
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Community Reviews
This book investigates a singular, marginal identity—people who, along with their ancestors, are “fully Black and fully Creek.” And in doing so, it exposes & interrogates some crucial aspects of race and power in American history.
For a fairly dense nonfiction book, the tone is both measured and curious. The personal narrative threads do feel a little muddled at times, but even at that, there are flashes of real poignancy and insight. They serve as a recurring clarification that this isn’t abstract history; it’s bound up with current lives, and living inheritances.
For me, what landed most was the depiction of how systematically the U.S. government dismantled the communal structures of the Creek people. The goal wasn’t only—maybe not even primarily—to seize land, but to break down collective identity. White colonizers, embodied in the US government, “knew that communalism among the Creeks provided strength, but you can divide and conquer a nation more easily with private property if you pit family estate against family estate.” The 1887 Dawes Act was formulated to do exactly that, to “divide Indigenous, communally held lands. . . . [forcing] these Nations, according to historian Kent Blansett, to ‘assume a capitalist and proprietary relationship with property.’ ” And, sadder still, with each other. Gayle elucidates how political and economic power work to convince people to see themselves apart from the communities that once sustained them. This was a widespread process, affecting the history of many Indian nations, and it’s well demonstrated in the specifics Gayle provides.
There is a powerful combination of intellect and anger throughout the book, and it’s infectious. It’s not a polemic, but you won’t come away from it without some outrage. The book is reflective, and at the same time deeply unsettling in its exploration of just how thoroughly the forces of racial hierarchy have been woven into law, policy and practice—both in the US as a whole, and even within the Creek nation itself.
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