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(AFP via Getty Images)
President Joe Biden travels to Tulsa, Oklahoma on 1 June to mark the 100th anniversary of one of the bloodiest episodes of racist violence in the US, when a white mob destroyed 35 blocks of a flourishing Black neighbourhood in Greenwood, displaced thousands of residents, and killed as many as 300 people within 14 hours beginning on 31 May, 1921.
Three known living survivors and their families and advocates continue to press for justice, and the anniversary of the attack has revived discussions about the decades of systemic injustice that followed, not just in Tulsa but across the US.
Thousands of people have gathered in Tulsa to commemorate the anniversary at vigils, memorials, discussions and other events.
Mr Biden will tour Greenwood Cultural Center and deliver remarks from Tulsa on Tuesday afternoon.
Ahead of the president’s visit, the White House unveiled a new set of policies and administration goals to reduce the racial wealth gap, noting that the “disinvestment in Black families in Tulsa and across the country throughout our history is still felt sharply today.”
Follow for live updates and highlights from The Independent
Biden unveils new plans to close racial wealth gap ahead of Tulsa visit
Biden will announce a new set of administration policies to close the white-Black wealth gap in the US during a speech in Tulsa on Tuesday.
The administration takes aim at addressing disparities in home ownership and appraisals, and will lean on the federal government’s purchasing power to expand federal contracting with small disadvantaged businesses
Alex Woodward1 June 2021 14:37
Biden urges Americans to reflect on ‘deep roots of racial terror’ amid calls for reparations
Joe Biden issued a proclamation on Memorial Day to mark the 100th anniversary of the 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,” the president said.
He also urged the federal government to “reckon with and acknowledge the role that it has played in stripping wealth and opportunity from Black communities.”
Alex Woodward1 June 2021 14:36
A white mob killed hundreds of Black people in Tulsa 100 years ago. Survivors still demand justice
Tulsa’s Greenwood was a place of possibility and prosperity for Black Americans following decades of enslavement, racist violence and legalised discrimination in a Jim Crow-era marked by public lynchings and the beginnings of mass incarceration emerging from slavery.
Within two days, a white mob reduced it to rubble.
The community’s long road to recovery would suffer the same systemic impacts of racial violence that reverberated across the US throughout the 20th century, from redlining and construction of highways through Black neighbourhoods to “urban renewal” initiatives and the use of eminent domain to seize Black-owned property.
I wrote about the long shadow of injustice and what’s next on the massacre’s 100th anniversary:
Alex Woodward1 June 2021 14:28
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