TSR Know Ya History: Could this be more than a coincidence? As cities across the U.S. and the globe are protesting police violence in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Tulsa, Oklahoma, will be recognizing 99 years since the race massacre on Black Wall Street.
May 31 and June 1 mark the 99th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history that was covered up for decades. During that time, a white mob descended on an affluent black community in Tulsa known as “Black Wall Street,” according to Vox.
About 1,200 homes were burned along with the 35 blocks that held prominent black businesses and an estimated 300 black people were killed.
The massacre was swept under the rug. Records of it disappeared and it wasn’t talked about for decades and was even dubbed the Tulsa race “riot” to imply that both sides were equally at fault. In the 1990s, Oklahoma put together a commission to try to find out what happened in the massacre.
A report was released on its findings and here’s what the prologue, written by then-state representative Don Ross, said:
“A mob destroyed 35-square-blocks of the African American Community during the evening of May 31, through the afternoon of June 1, 1921. It was a tragic, infamous moment in Oklahoma and the nation’s history. The worse civil disturbance since the Civil War. In the aftermath of the death and destruction the people of our state suffered from a fatigue of faith — some still search for a statute of limitation on morality, attempting to forget the longevity of the residue of injustice that at best can leave little room for the healing of the heart. Perhaps this report, and subsequent humanitarian recovery events by the governments and the good people of the state will extract us from the guilt and confirm the commandment of a good and just God — leaving the deadly deeds of 1921 buried in the call for redemption, historical correctness, and repair.”
The location of the bodies of the lives lost remains unknown to this day.
Today’s protests are very indicative that we’re still fighting the same fight and history is in some form repeating itself.
We pray for the safety of those who are putting their lives on the line to demand justice for George Floyd and others who have been wrongfully killed by the police.
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