REMEMBERING THE TULSA RACE MASSACRE OF 1921
©Wendell Griffen, 2023 On the evening of May 31, 1921, a mob of white people attacked the homes and businesses of Black people who lived in the thriving Greenwood community considered the “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Throughout that night and into the following day, June 1, the white mob burned homes, churches, and even a school. Here is a link to a 2021 National Public Radio retrospective about the event based on the account of Olivia Hooker, who was six years old when the massacre happened ( https://www.npr.org/2021/05/28/1001376496/100-years-later-a-survivors-story-of-the-tulsa-race-massacre ). Now read this online report about the Tulsa Race Massacre from Britanica ( https://www.britannica.com/event/Tulsa-race-massacre-of-1921 ). Please read the February 2001 official report that is linked in that report ( https://www.okhistory.org/research/forms/freport.pdf ). People should also read Dr. Jerrolyn Eulinberg's womanist perspective on the Tulsa Race Mass...
How many unarmed black and brown people have been killed and abused by law enforcement officers since President Kennedy's 1962 statement?
ReplyDeleteHow many calls have been made, peacefully yet firmly, to eradicate the culture of violence within law enforcement agencies and reform and remedy those agencies?
How many times have protesters been told to remain calm, be patient, and trust the process that inevitably results in no arrests, charges, or even dismissal of officers who kill and maim unarmed people?
Now recall President Kennedy's statement. The violent and tragic responses to abusive and homicidal police actions now are the inevitable and deplorable results of institutional failures within law enforcement agencies and the local, state, and federal governments that are supposed to regulate them.
But those violent results, however deplorable, are by no means comparable to the decades of vicious and tragic abusive and homicidal police behaviors.