Biden puts national spotlight on 100th anniversary of Tulsa Race Massacre

REUTERS- President Joe Biden is traveling to Oklahoma to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the1921 Tulsa Race Massacre putting the national spotlight on one of the worst acts of racial violence in America that was largely whitewashed and omitted from history books.

The president will meet with survivors of the domestic terror attack during his visit to Tulsa on Tuesday, as well as deliver remarks and tour the Greenwood Cultural Centre.

There, Biden will announce new policies to combat the racial wealth gap and reinvest federal funds in communities.

In his remarks, Biden is slated to announce that the federal government will boost contracting with “small, disadvantaged businesses” by 50 per cent, which would translate to an additional $100 billion over five years, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on a call Monday night.

To address racial discrimination in the housing market, Biden is poised to announce an interagency effort to address inequity in housing appraisals.

He will also highlight proposals from his infrastructure-focused American Jobs Plan, including a $10 billion community revitalization fund for civic infrastructure projects that officials said would help places like Greenwood.

With members of law enforcement and government employees working against Black residents, the state of Oklahoma recorded only 36 deaths, but a 2001 commission reported the number killed was as high as 300.

As many as 10,000 residents were displaced or put in internment camps after the massacre was painted as a “riot” to prevent Black businesses from collecting on insurance claims.

No one was ever charged with a crime and the community never recovered.

“The Federal Government must reckon with and acknowledge the role that it has played in stripping wealth and opportunity from Black communities,” the president’s proclamation reads.

Biden’s visit comes as the national conversation on reparation gains new ground.

H.R. 40 will be 40 a bill which will form a commission to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans — passed out of committee for the first time earlier this year.

It has not been put up for a vote in the House.

“I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street,” recounted Viola Fletcher, 107, to a House Judiciary subcommittee. “I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre every day. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not, and other survivors do not. And our descendants do not.”

In his presidential proclamation Monday, Biden quoted Fletcher’s testimony, named the known survivors — Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis and Lessie Benningfield Randle — and told their descendants the nation “will never forget.”

However, it is not clear whether Biden will announce his support for reparations for Black Tulsa massacre descendants, an issue that has long been debated in Oklahoma. Instead, officials reiterated Biden’s support for H.R. 40.

“The president has said, both before he became president and now that he is president, that he supports a study of reparations and he thinks it’s crucial to do that work on an issue as consequential as this one,” a senior White House official said Monday night.

Biden, who has acknowledged Black voters helped him win the presidency, has also taken some criticism on the race relations front since assuming office.

He made addressing racial equity a centre point of his presidential campaign, calling it one of the four crises facing the country and pledged to implement real reform under his administration, decades after he spearheaded the 1994 crime bill, which led to an increase of mass incarcerations.

But one year after George Floyd was killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, Biden has not made much headway on police reform as he vowed he would in his joint address to Congress.

The announcement that he was visiting Tulsa came on the same day Floyd’s family visited the White House on the anniversary of his death and when Biden had said he’d hoped to sign the policing reform act into law.

Biden’s visit comes nearly one year after former President Donald Trump chose Tulsa for his return to the campaign trail after three months off due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Following widespread backlash, Trump rescheduled his mega-rally from Juneteenth — the holiday commemorating an end to slavery — to June 20, he said, “out of respect.” The city saw a surge in Covid-19 cases following the rally, despite TikTok users’ deliberate attempts to plunge attendance.

Biden will be the first sitting president to visit the historic district of Greenwood to talk about the deadly racial attack.