Biden Commemorates 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre
President Joe Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to commemorate the Tulsa Race Massacre. During remarks on Tuesday, the 100th anniversary of the massacre…
President Joe Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to commemorate the Tulsa Race Massacre.
During remarks on Tuesday, the 100th anniversary of the massacre, Biden said, “For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness. But just because history is silent, it doesn’t mean that it did not take place. While darkness can hide much, it erases nothing.”
“Some injustices are so heinous, horrific, so grievous, they can’t be buried no matter how hard people try. And so it is here,” he continued.
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Biden noted that the massacre, which was one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history, had been “too long forgotten.” He noted that in the aftermath of the violence, it was ignored by newspapers and was not taught in schools in Tulsa.
“We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know,” Biden said. “We should know the good, the bad, everything. That’s what great nations do. They come to terms with their dark sides, and we’re a great nation. The only way to build a common ground is to truly repair and rebuild.”
He added, “I come here to help fill the silence. 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. We memorialize what happened here in Tulsa, so it can’t be erased.”
On June 1, 1921, a white mob attacked the Greenwood District in Tulsa — which was referred to as Black Wall Street –after a Black teenager was accused of sexually assaulting a white woman.