Tulsa Massacre Survivors Are Trying a New Legal Tactic for Reparations businessinsider.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from businessinsider.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
President Joe Biden has publically acknowledged one of the deadliest racial attacks in the history of the United States (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
As per the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, following World War I, Tulsa was recognized nationally for its affluent African American community the aforementioned district was a thriving business hub. Its surrounding residential area was referred to as “Black Wall Street.”
The museum notes that the deadly riot’s cause came on the morning of May 30, 1921, when a young Black man named Dick Rowland was riding in the elevator in the Drexel Building at Third and Main with a White woman named Sarah Page. “The details of what followed vary from person to person. Accounts of an incident circulated among the city’s White community during the day and became more exaggerated with each telling,” the museum’s account added.
Related Before Vanessa Hall-Harper won her District 1 City Council position in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2016, she talked extensively with her soon-to-be constituents and learned that food security was one of the most pressing issues for residents in North Tulsa. That’s why she made it a mission to place a moratorium on dollar stores and bring in healthy food options.
“In engaging with my community, the number one issue of concern that I heard was that we don’t have a grocery store in our community where we can go and shop, that all we have are dollar stores,” said Hall-Harper in a recent phone interview. “It’s something that I didn’t suffer from because I happen to have adequate transportation, so I could go anywhere in Tulsa to shop and get what I want. But obviously, there’s a large segment of my constituents that cannot.”
In the spring of 1921, Black residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma s Greenwood neighborhood were attacked by a mob of angry white people. More than 300 people were killed, and thousands were left homeless. Now, 100 years later, Tulsa is still reckoning with what lessons to take from that deadly massacre.