President Joe Biden will be part of the memory of one of the darkest and most forgotten moments of the Tulsa Massacre racial violence in the nation as he helps mark the centenary of the destruction of a thriving black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Joe Biden’s visit on Tuesday, during which he will mourn the hundreds of blacks killed by a white mob a century ago, comes amid national retribution over racial justice.
And it will be in stark contrast to a president’s last visit to Tulsa, which was last year.
Biden will be the first president to take part in the memories of the destruction of the so-called “Black Wall Street”.
In 1921, May 31, and June 1, white Tulsa residents and civil society leaders looted and burned the Greenwood district to the ground using airplanes to fire projectiles at it.
He will meet privately with the survivors of the massacre. Up to 300 Tulsa Negros were killed and thousands of survivors were temporarily forced to internment camps under National Guard supervision.
Only burned bricks and a fragment of a church cellar remain from the historically black quarter with more than 30 blocks.
America’s ongoing struggle for racial justice will continue to test Biden, whose presidency would have been impossible without the overwhelming support of black voters in both the Democratic primary and general election.
Biden has vowed to fight racism in the police force and other areas of life after nationwide protests that rekindled a national conversation about race following the death of George Floyd a year ago.
Floyd, a black man, was killed by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who held his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.
After Chauvin was sentenced in April, Biden said the country’s work was far from over with the verdict, stating, “We cannot stop here.”
He urged Congress to act quickly to address police reform. But for a long time, he has also projected himself as an ally of the police, who have to contend with criticism of tried and tested training tactics and methods and recruitment difficulties.
Despite its horror, the Tulsa massacre recently entered national discourse and the president’s visit will put the event even more in the spotlight.
“This is very important because if we are to be different we have to recognize what we have done,” said Eddie Glaude, president of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.
Biden’s visit said Glaude, “must be more than symbolic. Telling the truth is the prerequisite for reconciliation, and reconciliation is the basis for atonement.”
Biden stands ready to announce new measures during his visit to the Greenwood Cultural Center to help narrow the wealth gap between blacks and whites and invest in underserved communities by expanding access to homes and small businesses. The White House said the government will take steps to address disparities that mean black-owned homes are worth tens of thousands of dollars less than comparable white-owned homes and enact new federal regulations to combat housing discrimination.
The government is also aiming to increase the percentage of federal contracts awarded to disadvantaged small businesses by 50% by 2026 and to inject an additional $100 billion into those businesses over five years, according to the White House.
Joe Biden will also discuss how his roadmap, which continues to negotiate with Congress, can help create jobs and build wealth in colored communities.
Historians say the Tulsa massacre began after a local newspaper caused a sensation over a black man accused of stepping on the feet of a white girl.
When black tulsans showed up with guns to prevent the man from being lynched, the white residents reacted with overwhelming violence.
A grand jury investigation at the time concluded, without evidence, that unidentified agitators had given Tulsa African Americans both their firearms and their mistaken belief in “equal rights, social equality and their ability to demand the same”.
The tension lingers 100 years later
Organizers canceled a headline marking the centenary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, saying that no agreement could be reached on cash payments to three survivors of the deadly attack.
It sheds light on broader debates about redress for racial injustice. Since the end of slavery in 1865, reparations for African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved and for other racial discrimination have been debated in the United States.
But some of Tulsa’s black residents are wondering if the $20 million spent building the Greenwood Rising Museum in an increasingly gentrified part of town could have been better spent helping the black descendants of the massacre or the residents of the city North Side to help several miles away. Greenwood.
Disagreements among black leaders in Tulsa over how to handle memorial services and multi-million dollar donations have led two different groups to plan separate anniversary event boards.
Joe Biden, who was vice president of the nation’s first black president and elected a black woman to be his own vice president, is supporting a repair study both in Tulsa and generally but has made no commitments to endorse the payments.
Recently he declared that America must face its terrible past, saying, “We must realize that there cannot be a fulfillment of the American dream without facing the original sin of slavery and the centuries-old campaign of violence, fear, and labor trauma on African Americans in this country.”
It issued a proclamation calling Monday “the day of remembrance” of the massacre. Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, visited Tulsa last year under very different circumstances.
After Trump, a Republican suspended his campaign rallies due to the coronavirus pandemic, he chose Tulsa as the place to return.
But his decision to schedule the rally for June 19, so-called June 19, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, met with so much criticism that he postponed the event for a day.
The rally was still marked by protests outside and empty spaces in an arena in the city center.
Trump arrived in Tulsa at a very charged moment, days after ordering the eviction of Lafayette Square in front of the White House, with federal agents evicting those peacefully protesting Floyd’s death.
Trump reflexively embraced law enforcement during his presidency and was frequently accused of using racist rhetoric in painting apocalyptic and inaccurate scenes of American cities.
