How Tulsa is unburying – and confronting – a history of racism
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May 27, 2021, 3:51 AM·29 min read
On May 31 and June 1, 1921, a white mob – enraged by a rumor that a young Black man had assaulted a white woman – attacked the Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The mob set fire to the district, looted businesses, killed Black residents, and displaced thousands.
It was one of the most devastating incidents of racist violence in U.S. history. And it stayed mostly unmentioned for decades.
Today, 100 years after what is now known as the Tulsa race massacre, the city is finally reckoning with its past. But the process is raising difficult questions. Some residents say such a horrific event needs to be brought forward and understood. Others, however, ask why the memory needs to be relived at all. Why commemorate it? Can’t the city just move on?
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On May 31 and June 1, 1921, a white mob – enraged by a rumor that a young Black man had assaulted a white woman – attacked the Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The mob set fire to the district, looted businesses, killed Black residents, and displaced thousands.
It was one of the most devastating incidents of racist violence in U.S. history. And it stayed mostly unmentioned for decades.
Today, 100 years after what is now known as the Tulsa race massacre, the city is finally reckoning with its past. But the process is raising difficult questions. Some residents say such a horrific event needs to be brought forward and understood. Others, however, ask why the memory needs to be relived at all. Why commemorate it? Can’t the city just move on?
100 Years After the Tulsa Massacre, What Does Justice Look Like?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/magazine/tulsa-race-massacre-1921-greenwood.html
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100 Years After the Tulsa Massacre, What Does Justice Look Like?
In 1921, a white mob attacked the Greenwood district of Tulsa, killing hundreds of Black people and destroying the neighborhood. Justice has never been served. Can it still be today?
Lessie Benningfield Randle, a 106-year-old survivor of the Tulsa massacre.Credit.Rahim Fortune for The New York Times
May 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
As dusk was falling on Sept. 16, 2016, callers began dialing 9-1-1 to report that a Lincoln Navigator had been abandoned on 36th Street North in Tulsa, Okla.
During an 18-hour span, a white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in the predominantly Black Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands left homeless.