100 years after Tulsa Race Massacre, the damage remains
AARON MORRISON, Associated Press
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1of45This photo provided by the Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa shows the ruins of Dunbar Elementary School and the Masonic Hall in the aftermath of the June 1, 1921, Tulsa Race Massacre in Tulsa, Okla. (Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa via AP)APShow MoreShow Less
2of45Descendants of Tulsa Race Massacre survivor Ernestine Alpha Gibbs sit together during an interview in Tulsa, Okla., on Sunday, April 11, 2021. From left are her daughter, Carolyn Roberts; granddaughter-in-law, Tracy Gibbs; great-grandson, LeRoy Gibbs III, and grandson LeRoy Gibbs II. LeRoy II credits his grandmother, who not only built wealth and passed it on, but also showed succeeding generations how it was done. It was a lesson that few descendants of the victims of the race massacre had an opportuni
The Tulsa Race Massacre is just one of the starkest examples of how Black wealth has been sapped, again and again, by racism and racist violence forcing generation after generation to start from scratch while shouldering the burdens of being Black in America.
100 years after Tulsa Race Massacre, the damage remains
This article is provided courtesy of the Associated Press.
A burned blook in the Greenwood District is seen after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Tulsa, Ok. (Tulsa Historical Society and Museum)
May 25, 2021
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Not her body. She had left this Earth 18 years ago, at age 100. But on this day, three generations of her family brought Ernestine’s keepsakes back to this place which meant so much to her. A place that was, like their matriarch, a survivor of a long-ago atrocity.
Albums containing black-and-white photos of the grocery business that has employed generations of Gibbses. VHS cassette tapes of Ernestine reflecting on her life. Ernestine’s high school and college diplomas, displayed in not-so-well-aged leather covers.
The Tulsa Race Massacre is just one of the starkest examples of how Black wealth has been sapped, again and again, by racism and racist violence forcing generation after generation to start from scratch while shouldering the burdens of being Black in America.