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.
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‘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 early 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. “They come to terms with their dark sides. And we’re a great nation.”
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.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK