Friday is Juneteenth, (June 19). “Freedom Day,” celebrates the day a Union army general read federal orders in Galveston, proclaiming that all enslaved persons in Texas were now free. The Emancipation Proclamation had formally freed them 2 ½ years earlier. Enforcement had been slow and inconsistent. Finally, all slaves in the United States were free. Will African Americans ever be totally free? Will legislation always be slow? We must act now so that all people can be truly free.
The Tulsa race massacre was, May 31-June 1, 1921. It was the single worst event of racial violence in U.S. history. Mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses. More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and as many as 6,000 black residents were interned at large facilities. How many were killed? We may never know because bodies were put into unmarked, probably mass graves. A private airplane bombed and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of what at that time was the wealthiest black community in the United States. Before 9/11, before Pearl Harbor, the first time an aircraft bombed the U.S. was 99 years ago in Tulsa. Ten thousand “Negroes” were left homeless.
Black and white residents were silent for decades about the terror and violence. If a black person spoke or wrote about it, he or she would be lynched. The massacre was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories. Finally, a commission to study the massacre began 75 years later. The Commission's final report, published in 2001, said that the city had conspired with the mob of white citizens against black citizens. Will we now learn about systemic racism? Will justice always be delayed? Listen! We must learn.
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