TULSA, Okla. Scenes of destruction look like Dresden after World War II. Thick clouds of smoke billow over an urban landscape. After the fires, buildings.
Biden declared that the nation must learn from its “dark sides” as he became the first president to lead a remembrance ceremony in Tulsa for victims of the long overlooked racist massacre.
How Tulsa Massacre Not Learned for Nearly 100 Years
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June 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the destruction of “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
But that day with hundreds of Blacks killed, and houses and businesses burned to the ground did not become part of the American story.
Instead, it was ignored, unlearned and untaught until many years later. Even this year, the Tulsa
massacre is still unknown to many Americans.
The massacre in Tulsa began when white anger built over a Black man accused of stepping on a white girl’s foot. Blacks came with guns to the jail in Tulsa where the man was held to prevent his killing. White people answered with deadly force. For the next two days, on May 31 and June 1, mobs of white people terrorized and burned the Black neighborhood of Greenwood. The attackers killed up to 300 Black people and forced survivors into