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Victor Luckerson

Victor Luckerson is the national correspondent for Smithsonian Magazine. He is the author of Built From the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa's Greenwood District, America's Black Wall Street, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He also runs an email newsletter about neglected Black history called Run It Back.

Stories from this author

Green, from an illustration published in 1872

Samuel Green Freed Himself and Others From Slavery. Then He Was Imprisoned Over Owning a Book

After buying his own liberty, the Marylander covertly assisted conductors on the Underground Railroad, including Harriet Tubman. But his possession of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” turned him into an abolitionist hero

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Amaze Yourself With the Unbelievable Story of Bessie Coleman, the Black Aviator Who Wowed the Nation With Her High-Flying Achievements

Long before the Tuskegee Airmen, Coleman inspired a generation of pilots to take to the skies

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How Black Americans in the South Boldly Defied Jim Crow to Build Business Empires of Their Own

The Great Migration transformed the nation—but millions of African Americans never left their Southern communities. Their unlikely success makes their stories all the more remarkable

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The Unrealized Promise of Oklahoma

How the push for statehood led a beacon of racial progress to oppression and violence