Tulsa City Council To Consider Race Massacre Resolution bigcountry995.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bigcountry995.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Loading the player.
2021 was always going to be a fraught year for Tulsa, Oklahoma. On May 31 and June 1, the city marks the centennial of a racist massacre that, over a 24-hour period, destroyed the Black neighborhood of Greenwood. The event left at least dozens dead and displaced thousands.
Over the past year, city officials and civic leaders have planned events to commemorate the victims and survivors. Yet the city is also facing a reparations lawsuit from those same individuals, and the commission in charge of commemoration plans has been accused of whitewashing the city’s history and marketing a narrative of unity that doesn’t yet exist.
Loading the player.
Tulsa is commemorating the centennial of the 1921 race massacre, a violent incident of racism that almost entirely destroyed the cityâs Black community. The events are putting a spotlight on Black Tulsansâ long, painful struggle toward racial equality â a struggle echoed throughout U.S. history in Black communities across the country. Both historically and in todayâs political environment, the sense among many Black voters in Tulsa is that neither party really has their interests at heart.Â
âThey feel it doesnât matter either way, Republican or Democrat,â says Mareo Johnson, a local pastor and founder of Black Lives Matter Tulsa. ââNothing is going to change in my situation, my circumstance, my surroundings.ââÂ
How Tulsa is unburying – and confronting – a history of racism
Read full article
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?