Guilty When Black

Guilty When Black is the poignant, gut-wrenching story of a

young African American woman, Miashah Moses, who, through unrelenting media

attention and a rush to judgment by the DA, was charged with second-degree

murder in the fiery deaths of her two small nieces, Noni (4) and Nylah (18

months) when she fed them lunch and left for eight minutes to empty the trash.

While she was gone, the faulty stove caught fire, a not uncommon occurrence in

the low-income apartments, according the electrical contractors. The book's

four-part story offers a rare glimpse into the unique challenges faced by

minority and marginalized women in Oklahoma, a state with the highest rate of

female incarceration in the nation. Miashah's plight is intertwined with vivid

stories of five incarcerated women, the rise of one judge and fall of another,

and the landmark exoneration of three black men wrongfully sentenced for crimes

they did not commit. The non-fiction book is prefaced with a gripping account

of the Tulsa 1921 Race Massacre, the largest slaughter of African Americans in

U.S. history that left the city's affluent Greenwood district, known as the

"Black Wall Street," burned to the ground.