President Joe Biden visited Tulsa Oklahoma today to honor the victims of the 1921 Race Massacre against Black Americans.
During his address after he toured the Hall of Survivors (of the Tulsa Massacre) where he acknowledged that it took one hundred years for a United States President to come "and acknowledge a truth of what took place here." A moment later, he said:
"While darkness can hide much, it erases nothing... Only with truth can come healing, justice, and repair...To all those lost a hundred years ago...to their descendants, that's why we're here to shine a light to make sure America knows in full."
The President then recounted the events of that horrific day and how the vibrant and prosperous black community of Tulsa was attacked and decimated by a racist mob, complete with private planes carrying bombs, who wanted to lynch a young black man who was accused of assaulting a white girl, saying that:
"On one night changed everything...While Greenwood was not a community to itself, it was not separated from the outside...There was enough hate and resentment and vengeance in the community. Enough people who believed that America does not belong to everyone and not everyone is created equal...A belief enforced by law (in 1921,) by badge, by hood and by noose that lit the fuse..."
Mr. Biden then reminded the audience that 1,100 homes and businesses were destroyed, insurance companies rejected damage claims, 10,000 people were "left destitute and homeless and placed in internment camps." No one responsible was arrested or put on trial. Deaths officially put at 36 were actually in the hundreds with most of the bodies dumped in mass graves.
Descendents still do not know what happened to their family members and archeological excavations have been conducted to find out what happened to them.
The President then told the audience the importance of remembering and never forgetting again what happened in Tulsa on May 31, 1921, stating:
"My fellow Americans. This was not a riot. This was a massacre. Among the worst in our history and not the only one and for too long forgotten by our history. As soon as it happened, it was a clear effort to erase it from our memories...For a long time schools in Tulsa did not teach it, let alone elsewhere...We do ourselves no favors by pretending none of this ever happened...because it still impacts us today. We can't just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know. We should know the good and bad of everything...In silence, wounds deepen...only in remembrance, do wounds heal."
Mr. Biden then talked about what might have been if the black community had been allowed to be rebuilt and flourish after the massacres instead of the constant stomping down of that community by decades of racist policy.
The President then discussed ways the Biden/Harris Administration hoped to help the Black Community of Tulsa and other minority communities including:
- "An aggressive effort to combat racial discrimination in housing."
- Aid to black and brown small businesses.
- Access to universal Pre K.
- Invest in Black Universities and research institutions.
- Rebuilding infrastructure including clean water and expanded broadband.
Please click here to read the entire Biden/Harris proposal.
President Biden then pivoted to discuss the threats and assaults against the right to vote
He discussed speaking with the late Representative John Lewis who called "the right to vote precious, almost sacred."
Mr. Biden said of these efforts to suppress the vote "are UnAmerican."
Drawing on history, the President reminded the audience that these fringe efforts to subvert Democracy "are not unprecedented," remembering the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60's.
He also called attention to the attempts in 2020 and now to purge voter rolls, intimidate voters, and put restrictions at the ballot box.
Despite that and the pandemic, "more people voted in the last election than in any time in American History."
On the attempts to make it harder to vote in some states, Mr. Biden said:
"Let me be clear. we're going to be ramping up efforts to overcome again...Today, as for the act of voting itself, I urge voting rights groups in this country to begin to redouble their efforts now to register and educate voters in June...With your leadership and support, we're going to overcome again but it's going to take a hell of a lot of work."
Mr. Biden closed by discussing the stain of racism in America, calling the events that occurred in Tulsa a century ago "an act of hate and domestic terrorism."
He then tied it into the recent events with the Neo Nazi's at Charlottesville in 2017 and the white domestic terrorists extremist attacking the Nations Capitol on January 6, 2021, saying:
"Hate's never defeated. It only hides. It hides and given a little bit of oxygen, just a little bit of oxygen by its leaders, it comes out from under the rock like it was happening again like it never went away. So folks let's not give hate a safe harbor...Terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today, not ISIS, not Al Queda..."
The President then thanked the Tulsa survivors and called for hope, stating:
"Learning from you is a gift, a genuine gift...We have hope but we have to give them (the people) the backbone to do what has to be done...Let's not give up man. Let's not give up... Let's make it (justice, history, and hope) rhyme."
Yesterday, the President issued a White House Proclamation, declaring May 31 a Day of Remembrance of the horrific racist events that took place in Tulsa 100 years ago yesterday.
In the proclamation, Mr. Biden declared:
"With this proclamation, I commit to the survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, including Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, the descendants of victims, and to this Nation that we will never forget. We honor the legacy of the Greenwood community, and of Black Wall Street, by reaffirming our commitment to advance racial justice through the whole of our government, and working to root out systemic racism from our laws, our policies, and our hearts."
This proclamation also comes one week after two post-centurion survivors of the Tulsa Massacre (who were small children when it happened) testified before Congress.
Sadly, as the President referenced in today's speech and his Memorial Day Address yesterday, the events following World War One (Democracy in peril, racist riots like those in Omaha, Chicago, and Tulsa, chaos and domestic terrorist bombing attacks by left and right-wing radical groups, and the growth of the Ku Klux Klan that Biden referred to in today's address) that continued into the early 1920s appear to be repeating themselves with Twenty-First Century Equalvelents on the fringe right and their enablers in local, state, and federal government with hate crimes against Asians, Blacks and Jews and attempts to make it difficult to vote.
The people need to be mindful and stop this festering of our society by voting out the ones that would promote the big lies, divide the people, and destroy the American Ideal and Democratic-Republic institutions.
They also need to teach a full version of this nation's history, both the good and the bad.
For more documentaries and perspectives on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, please click on the small sample of links below.
NEVER FORGET AND DO NOT LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN.
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