Biden honours victims of Tulsa race massacre
Joe Biden has become the first sitting president of the United States to visit the site in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where hundreds of Black Americans were killed by a white mob in 1921, saying the US must learn from one of the worst episodes of racist violence in the country’s history.
The Democrat marked the centenary of the mass killing by meeting the few remaining survivors of the violence on Tuesday.
“This was not a riot, this was a massacre,” Biden said in a speech to survivors and their descendants. “(It was) among the worst in our history – but not the only one and, for too long, forgotten by our history.
“As soon as it happened, there was a clear effort to erase it from our collective memories … for a long time the schools in Tulsa didn’t even teach it, let alone schools elsewhere.”
White residents in Tulsa shot and killed as many as 300 Black people on May 31 and June 1, 1921 and burned and looted homes and businesses, after a white woman accused a Black man of assault, an allegation that was never proven.
The rampage devastated the African American community of Greenwood, at the time so prosperous it was called Black Wall Street. Historians say nearly 10,000 people were left homeless.
But insurance companies did not cover the damage and no one was charged for the violence.
Biden said the legacy of racist violence and white supremacy continued to resonate in the US.
“We should know the good, the bad, everything. That’s what great nations do,” he said.
Biden said the deadly January 6 assault on the US Capitol and efforts by a number of states to restrict voting rights were echoes of the same problem.
“What happened in Greenwood was an act of hate and domestic terrorism, with a through-line that exists today,” Biden said.
Biden said one of the survivors of the attack was reminded of it earlier this year when far-right supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol while Congress was certifying Biden’s 2020 election win.
Earlier, the White House announced a set of policy initiatives to counter racial inequality, including plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in communities like Greenwood that suffer from persistent poverty, as well as efforts to combat housing discrimination.
Families of the affected Oklahoma residents have pushed for financial reparations; a measure Biden has only committed to studying further.
Biden said his administration would soon also unveil measures to counter hate crimes and white supremacist violence that he said the intelligence community has concluded.
Biden oversaw a moment of silence for the Tulsa victims after meeting three people who lived in Greenwood during the massacre, Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis and Lessie Benningfield Randle.
Now between the ages of 101 and 107, the survivors addressed Congress earlier this year, asking for “justice” and that the country recognise their suffering.
They are also parties to a lawsuit against state and local officials seeking remedies for the mass killing, including a victims’ compensation fund.
In 2001, a commission created to study the tragedy concluded that Tulsa authorities themselves had armed some of the white rioters and recommended reparations be paid.
The mayor of Tulsa formally apologised this week for the city government’s failure to protect the community.
Aljazeera
