One hundred years after the Greenwood Race Massacre in Tulsa, an event buried in history and schoolbooks, President Biden gave an impassioned and graphic speech acknowledging the event. Below is the proclamation issued from the White House.
A Proclamation on Day Of Remembrance:
100 Years After The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
MAY 31, 2021 • PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS
One hundred
years ago, a violent white supremacist mob raided, firebombed, and destroyed
approximately 35 square blocks of the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood
in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Families and children were murdered in cold blood. Homes,
businesses, and churches were burned. In all, as many as 300 Black Americans
were killed, and nearly 10,000 were left destitute and homeless. Today, on this
solemn centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I call on the American people to
reflect on the deep roots of racial terror in our Nation and recommit to the
work of rooting out systemic racism across our country.
Before the
Tulsa Race Massacre, Greenwood was a thriving Black community that had grown
into a proud economic and cultural hub. At its center was Greenwood Avenue,
commonly known as Black Wall Street. Many of Greenwood’s 10,000 residents were
Black sharecroppers who fled racial violence after the Civil War.
In the
decades following the Civil War and Reconstruction, Greenwood became a place
where Black Americans were able to make a new start and secure economic
progress despite the continued pain of institutional and overt racism. The
community was home to a growing number of prominent Black entrepreneurs as well
as working-class Black families who shared a commitment to social activism and
economic opportunity. As Greenwood grew, Greenwood Avenue teemed with
successful Black-owned businesses, including restaurants, grocery stores,
hotels, and offices for doctors, lawyers, and dentists. The community also
maintained its own school system, post office, a savings and loan institution,
hospital, and bus and taxi service.
Despite
rising Jim Crow systems and the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan, Greenwood’s
economic prosperity grew, as did its citizens’ demands for equal rights. This
made the community a source of pride for many Black Americans. It also made the
neighborhood and its families a target of white supremacists. In 2 days, a
violent mob tore down the hard-fought success of Black Wall Street that had
taken more than a decade to build.
In the years
that followed, the destruction caused by the mob was followed by laws and
policies that made recovery nearly impossible. In the aftermath of the attack,
local ordinances were passed requiring new construction standards that were
prohibitively expensive, meaning many Black families could not rebuild. Later,
Greenwood was redlined by mortgage companies and deemed “hazardous” by the
Federal Government so that Black homeowners could not access home loans or
credit on equal terms. And in later decades, Federal investment, including
Federal highway construction, tore down and cut off parts of the community. The
attack on Black families and Black wealth in Greenwood persisted across
generations.
The Federal
Government must reckon with and acknowledge the role that it has played in
stripping wealth and opportunity from Black communities. The Biden-Harris
Administration is committed to acknowledging the role Federal policy played in
Greenwood and other Black communities and addressing longstanding racial
inequities through historic investments in the economic security of children and
families, programs to provide capital for small businesses in economically
disadvantaged areas, including minority-owned businesses, and ensuring that
infrastructure projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and
environmental justice, and promote affordable access.
A century
later, the fear and pain from the devastation of Greenwood is still felt. As
Viola Fletcher, a 107-year-old survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre courageously
testified before the Congress recently, “I will never forget the violence of
the white mob when we left our home. I still see Black men being shot, Black
bodies lying in the street. 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.”
With this
proclamation, I commit to the survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, including
Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, the descendants
of victims, and to this Nation that we will never forget. We honor the legacy of the Greenwood
community, and of Black Wall Street, by reaffirming our commitment to advance
racial justice through the whole of our government, and working to root out
systemic racism from our laws, our policies, and our hearts.
NOW,
THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America,
by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the
United States, do hereby proclaim May 31, 2021, a Day of Remembrance: 100 Years
After The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. I call upon the people of the United States
to commemorate the tremendous loss of life and security that occurred over
those 2 days in 1921, to celebrate the bravery and resilience of those who
survived and sought to rebuild their lives again, and commit together to
eradicate systemic racism and help to rebuild communities and lives that have
been destroyed by it.
IN WITNESS
WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of May, in the year
of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United
States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
