Paradise

In July 1976, nine armed men enter the Convent: twins Deacon “Deek” and Steward Morgan, their nephew K. D. Smith, Arnold Fleetwood, his son Jefferson “Jeff” Fleetwood, Sargeant, Harper, Menus, and Wisdom. The building was once an embezzler’s mansion, a monument to the previous owner’s wealth. The mansion was later converted into a Convent for Arapaho girls. The nuns tried to remove remnants of its previous opulence—like suggestive statues—but small reminders remain. Now closed, the Convent is home to a handful of women.

As they make their way through the building, the men find evidence that supports their belief that the women are engaging in “sinful” behavior: hammocks instead of beds, astrology charts, and letters written in “blood.” The men are from Ruby, a small, all-Black town in Oklahoma 17 miles away. The leaders of Ruby have decided that the Convent is a threat to Ruby’s deliberate exclusion of outsiders and the security that ensures. They have, therefore, decided to eliminate it. This fear is born out of Ruby’s troubled past and its relationship to the failed, older city of Haven.

Established in 1889, Haven was an all-Black town of freedmen. The original inhabitants had traveled together from Mississippi and Louisiana, searching for a Black town to settle in.