Vandalism at Black Wall Street Gallery. Photo courtesy of Black Wall Street Gallery.
Monday was the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, in which white mobs burned the city’s prosperous Greenwood neighborhood, known as Black Wall Street, to the ground, killing as many as 300 African Americans.
When Ricco Wright, owner of New York’s Black Wall Street Gallery, arrived for work that day, he was disturbed to discover that vandals had covered a sign for his business with white paint. The incident took place between 11 p.m. Sunday and 7 a.m. Monday, according to CBS.
“We’ve called the police and they claimed that this isn’t hate speech despite the fact that this occurred on the centennial anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre,” the gallery wrote on Facebook and Instagram on Monday. “As far as we’re concerned, smearing white paint on the word ‘Black’ is deliberate and intentional and therefore constitutes hate speech.”