God of the Whirlwind: Horror, Memory, and Story in Black Waco (Baylor University Press, 2025)

Available for purchase from BU Press, Bookshop.org, Amazon, and elsewhere.

Tyler Davis offers a powerful collection of community stories that surface painful histories and highlight the work of memory in how Black Wacoans have made meaning of the racial violence of lynching and nature’s tornado wrath. The experiences, spiritual wisdom, and narratives of Black history and life in Waco recounted by the storytellers in God of the Whirlwind are unforgettable.

Judith Weisenfeld, Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion, Princeton University

Mayborn Museum, March 31, 2025

  • Fabled Bookshop, Waco, TX, August 5, 2025

  • Bullock Texas State History Museum, Austin, TX, April 26, 2025

  • Baylor University, Cranes Scholars Program, April 25, 2025

  • Mayborn Museum, Waco, Texas, March 31, 2025; coverage here and here

  • Southwest Commission on Religious Studies, Plenary Session, Irving, Texas, March 1, 2025

  • The University of Chicago Divinity School, “Experiments in Religious Study and Solidarity,” February 27, 2025

  • The Twig Book Shop, San Antonio, TX, February 15, 2025

  • Baylor University, Honors College, “Black Intellectual Tradition,” November 14, 2024.

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