President Biden on Tuesday became the first chief executive to commemorate the 1921 Tulsa race massacre that claimed the lives of dozens if not hundreds …
President Biden on Tuesday became the first chief executive to commemorate the 1921 Tulsa race massacre that claimed the lives of dozens if not hundreds of black Americans 100 years, declaring, “This was not a riot. This was a massacre.” “I come here to help fill the silence,” Biden told his audience at the Greenwood Cultural Center, in Tulsa, Okla., where he toured an exhibit marking the centenary of the massacre. “Because in silence, wounds deepen. And only, as painful as it is, only in remembrance do wounds heal. We just have to choose to remember.” Biden began his remarks with a recounting of the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, beginning with the arrest of a black shoeshiner accused of assaulting a white female elevator operator and continuing through the Ku Klux Klan-led carnage that leveled approximately three dozen blocks of the Greenwood district, dubbed “Black U85FC054344F4DCF7E3972F361F144C5” due to its prosperity. “My fellow Americans, this was not a riot,” the president said after pausing for a moment of silence. “This was a massacre.” The exact number of people killed over those two days has never been fully determined. A commission established by the Oklahoma legislature reported in 2001 that it had confirmed 39 victims, but added that the true number could be as high as 300. The massacre, long relegated to the margins of American history, has gained new prominence due to the centennial commemorations following a year of racial strife brought on by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
