President Joe Biden Travels to Tulsa Oklahoma to Mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921
June 1, 2021
TULSA (AGN.NEWS) – Today, President Joe Biden become the first sitting president to commemorate the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. He came here to help heal the wounds of a nation.
The Tulsa Race Massacre in the Greenwood community – known as “Black Wall Street” – which was America’s wealthiest African-American neighborhood, was a massacre of Black Americans by White Americans.
This massacre in Tulsa was one of the darkest periods in America’s history. It began on May 31, 1921 and continued for over 16 hours into the night of June 1, 1921. In the end over 300 Black residents, men, women, and children were murdered by a White mob.
Over $200,000,000 of the personal property of Greenwood’s Black residents was destroyed. Well over 1,000 homes and businesses in this 35 block community was looted and burned to the ground by police, city officials, sheriff’s deputies, pilots in company-owned airplanes, and a mob of over 5,000 White men. White-owned insurance companies refused to cover the loses even though they had collected the insurance payments.
President Biden said: “For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness.”
“My fellow Americans, this was not a riot. This was a massacre, and among the worst in our history. But not the only one.”
Eighteen months after the Tulsa massacre, on January 1, 1923, a white supremacist mob destroyed the black town of Rosewood in rural Levy County, Florida killing men, women, and children.
On Monday, May 31, 2021, President Biden’s Proclamation:
President Joe Biden issued a proclamation on Monday marking 100 years since a “violent white supremacist mob” descended on the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 31, 1921, wrecking businesses, destroying homes and killing hundreds of Black people.
In the proclamation, Biden pointed to the racist mob that “raided, firebombed and destroyed … the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood.”
“Families and children were murdered in cold blood. Homes, businesses, and churches were burned. In all, as many as 300 Black Americans were killed,” the proclamation reads. “Today, on this solemn centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I call on the American people to reflect on the deep roots of racial terror in our Nation and recommit to the work of rooting out systemic racism across our country.”
What can we learn from Tulsa.
As a notable expert on racism said, “Racism was designed to intimidate and oppress African Americans who create economic and political competition. There’s no place in America for it, for many reasons including these reasons – Racism sets the country back economically, kills innovation, creativity, and economic growth now and for all future generations. If anyone is in doubt about the cost of racism, look at the 14 trillion dollars of economic losses in the last 50 years by trying to prevent African-Americans and Black business owners from succeeding in business.”
“The lost tax revenue alone could have funded quality education for all children, free college education for every child, lower taxes, improve roads, build new energy-efficient housing, expand the creation of new technologies, double the Social Security recipient payments for a whole generation, and expand healthcare.”
“Systemic racism hurts the perpetrator as well as the persecuted,” she said.
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