TULSA -- President Joe Biden marked the 100th anniversary of the massacre that destroyed a thriving Black community in Tulsa, declaring Tuesday that he had "come to fill the silence" about one of the nation's darkest -- and long suppressed -- moments of racial violence.
"Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous, they cannot be buried, no matter how hard people try," Biden said. "Only with truth can come healing."
Biden's commemoration of the deaths of hundreds of Black people killed by a white mob a century ago came amid the current national reckoning on racial justice. It was the first time a president visited the area to address what had happened in Greenwood, the prosperous Black community, which was the site of one of the worst outbreaks of racial violence in U.S. history but was largely ignored in history books.
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"Just because history is silent, it does not mean that it did not take place," Biden said. He said "hell was unleashed, literal hell was unleashed," and now, the nation must come to grips with the following sin of denial.
"We can't just choose what we want to know, and not what we should know," Biden said. "I come here to help fill the silence, because in silence wounds deepen."
He recalled in detail the horror that occurred from May 31, 1921, to June 1, 1921, when angry whites descended on Greenwood, which was referred to as Black Wall Street, killing as many as 300 people and destroying more than 1,250 homes.
"My fellow Americans, this was not a riot," Biden said, as people in the crowd rose to their feet. "This was a massacre."
A man was strapped to a truck and dragged through the street, the president said. The bodies of a murdered family were draped over a fence outside their home. An older couple was shot while praying.
The white attackers even used private airplanes to drop explosives on the neighborhood, Biden said -- "the first and only domestic aerial assault of its kind on an American city, here in Tulsa," he said.
"We do ourselves no favors by pretending none of this ever happened," Biden told the crowd. "We should know the good, the bad, everything. That's what great nations do: They come to terms with their dark sides."
After Biden left, there was a spontaneous singing by some audience members of a famous civil-rights march song, "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around."
The president, joined by top Black advisers, also met privately with three surviving members of the Greenwood community who lived through the violence, the White House said. Viola "Mother" Fletcher, Hughes "Uncle Red" Van Ellis and Lessie "Mother Randle" Benningfield Randle are all between the ages of 101 and 107.
Biden said their experience had been "a story seen in the mirror dimly."
"But no longer," the president told the survivors. "Now, your story will be known in full view."
POLICY PLANS
In addition to shedding light on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, the president's visit was intended to highlight steps his administration is taking to close the wealth gap between Black and white people in the United States. America's continuing struggle over race continues to test Biden, whose presidency would have been impossible without overwhelming support from Black voters, both in the Democratic primaries and the general election.
Biden, who was joined by Housing Secretary Marcia Fudge and senior advisers Susan Rice and Cedric Richmond, announced new measures he said could help narrow the wealth gap between races and reinvest in underserved communities by expanding access to homeownership and small-business ownership.
The White House said the administration will take steps to address disparities that result in Black-owned homes being appraised at tens of thousands of dollars less than comparable homes owned by white residents as well as issue new federal rules to fight housing discrimination.
Biden also announced measures to increase the number of federal contracts awarded to small, disadvantaged businesses. The U.S. government is the largest consumer of goods, but only about 10% of federal agency dollars go to small, disadvantaged businesses, a White House official said. Biden aims to increase spending with those businesses by 50%, or an additional $100 billion in contracts over five years, according to the White House.
The policies -- some of which had already been announced -- were intended to show that the president was taking action, not just engaging in a commemoration, to support the Black community in Tulsa and elsewhere. The policies will affect the entire country, but they are designed to boost communities like Tulsa, administration officials said during a conference call with reporters Monday night.
But Biden's proposals drew immediate criticism from the nation's most prominent civil rights group, the NAACP.
Although he applauded Biden's focus on homeownership as a way to build wealth, NAACP President Derrick Johnson said many Blacks would not qualify for the necessary loans because of a high debt-to-income ratio. That's particularly true, he said, among government workers.
"That must be addressed if there is going to be a question of dealing with the racial wealth gap," Johnson said.
According to a report by the Center for American Progress, the median wealth of white households was $189,100 in 2019 compared with $24,100 for Black households. The gap widened in 2020 as the pandemic hit minority communities harder than white ones, according to the report.
Johnson also complained that the Biden administration omitted the canceling of student debt, one of the most effective ways to shrink the wealth gap, according to some researchers.
"Components of the plan are encouraging, but it fails to address the student loan debt crisis that disproportionately affects African Americans," Johnson said. "You cannot begin to address the racial wealth gap without addressing the student loan debt crisis."
On the way to Tulsa, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House principal deputy press secretary, told reporters aboard Air Force One that the administration had provided billions in funding to Black colleges as part of its $1.7 trillion coronavirus plan. But she did not answer questions about alleviating the financial stress of those who currently have student debt.
In the Monday night briefing, administration officials insisted that the other steps would help Black people around the country, particularly hard-hit communities like Greenwood.
Biden also promised Tuesday to "fight like heck" against Republican efforts to restrict voting. He announced that he was appointing Vice President Kamala Harris to lead efforts on voting rights. Republicans portray such legislation as aimed at preventing fraudulent voting, but many critics believe it is designed to limit the voting of minority groups.
"This sacred right is under assault with incredible intensity like I've never seen," Biden said, adding that June should be a "month of action" on Capitol Hill.
The president has been under pressure to show more urgency in the face of a GOP push that includes efforts to overturn the last presidential election, former President Donald Trump's false insistence that he won and Republican resistance to Democrats' voting-rights laws in Congress.
A YEAR AGO
Biden's trip to Tulsa presented a vivid contrast with Trump's visit a year ago.
After suspending his campaign rallies because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump, a Republican, chose Tulsa as the place to mark his return. But his decision to schedule the rally on June 19, the holiday known as Juneteenth that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, was met with such fierce criticism that he postponed the event by a day. The rally was still marked by protests outside and empty seats inside an arena downtown.
During Tuesday's event several hundred people milled around Greenwood Avenue in front of the historic Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church awaiting Biden's arrival at the nearby Greenwood Cultural Center. Some vendors were selling memorabilia, including Black Lives Matter hats, shirts and flags under a bridge of the interstate that cuts through the district.
Latasha Sanders, 33, of Tulsa, brought her five children and a nephew in hopes of spotting Biden.
"It's been 100 years, and this is the first we've heard from any U.S. president," she said. "I brought my kids here today just so they could be a part of history and not just hear about it, and so they can teach generations to come."
John Ondiek, another Tulsan in the crowd following Biden's speech on cellphones, said he was encouraged that "There aren't just Black people here. That tells me there's an awakening going on in this country."
The names and pictures of Black men killed by police hung on a chain-link fence next to the church, including Eric Harris and Terrence Crutcher in Tulsa.
Biden has pledged to help combat racism in policing and other areas following nationwide protests after the death of George Floyd, a Black man, under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer.
Biden had vowed to secure passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act by May 25, the anniversary of Floyd's death. The bill would ban the police's use of chokeholds, impose restrictions on deadly force and make it easier to prosecute officers for wrongdoing. The administration missed that deadline, but lawmakers in both parties have expressed optimism that they would be able to reach a compromise on the legislation in the coming weeks.
Biden called on Congress to act swiftly to address policing changes. But he has also long projected himself as an ally of police, who are struggling with criticism about long-used tactics and training methods and difficulties in recruitment.
Historians say the massacre in Tulsa began after a local newspaper drummed up a furor over a Black man accused of stepping on a white woman's foot. When Black Tulsans showed up with guns to prevent the man's lynching, white residents responded with overwhelming force.
Thousands of survivors were forced for a time into internment camps overseen by the National Guard. Burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that survive today of the more than 30-block historically Black district.
Despite investigations, no one was ever convicted of crimes related to the Tulsa massacre.
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Lemire, Darlene Superville and Sean Murphy of The Associated Press; by Katie Rogers and Michael D. Shear of The New York Times; by Tyler Pager, Annie Linske and Hannah Allamy of The Washington Post; and by Mario Parker, Justin Sink and Jennfier Epsteinof Bloomberg News (TNS).
