100 years after the racial massacre in Tulsa, the wound remains open in the United States

TULSA, Oklahoma – At the foot of modern buildings on a street in Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma, discreet metal plaques draw attention. Nailed to the ground, They are named after black-owned businesses that were once there before they were destroyed in one of America’s worst racial massacres in 1921.: “Shoemaker Grier”, “Earl Real Estate”.

The plates, a rare vestige of a district so prosperous that it has been nicknamed “Black Wall Street”, show that the history of Greenwood – a historically black area – is not understood by the monuments that are currently preserved, but by those that no longer exist.

On the eve of the visit of President Joe Biden, popular with the black electorate, who will attend tomorrow at commemorations of the centenary of the massacre, and after a year marked by the Black Lives Matter movement, the Tulsa massacre resonates more than ever.

“They came and destroyed Greenwood and burned everything down,” said Bobby Eaton, 86, a local resident and former civil rights activist.

A century ago, in this southern city of the United States, the arrest of a young black man accused of assaulting a white woman has sparked one of the worst outbreaks of racial violence in the country.

On May 31, 1921, after the arrest of Dick rowlandHundreds of angry whites gathered outside the Tulsa courthouse, signaling to black residents that a lynching – a common practice then and until recently in the 1960s – was imminent.

A group of black World War I veterans, some of them armed, mobilized to try to protect Rowland. The tension increased and shots were fired. Fewer black residents retreated to Greenwood, known at the time for its economic prosperity and numerous businesses.

The next day, at dawn, white men looted and torched buildings, chasing and beating the blacks who lived there. Throughout the day they looted Black Wall Street – the police not only failed to intervene but contributed to the destruction – until all that was left was rubble and ashes, killing until to 300 people in the process.

The destruction left some 10,000 people homeless.

Dressed in a blue cap on his head and a t-shirt commemorating the centenary of the massacre draped over his shirt, Eaton feels marked by this event which he has never seen but heard so much about as a child in the her father’s hairdressing salon. “I learned a lot about the riots when I was very young, it has never left my memory,” he said.

In his opinion, similar to that of many other neighbors, it was the prosperity of African Americans that sparked the destruction.

“It sparked a lot of jealousy, and it still is. “That mindset that has largely destroyed Greenwood still exists here in Tulsa,” Eaton said.

Even 100 years after the massacre, racial tensions persist.

At the Black Wall Street Liquid Lounge – a cafe whose name, like many Greenwood businesses, is a tribute to the neighborhood’s golden age – Kode Ransom, a 32-year-old black man, sports long dreadlocks and a tall smile while greeting customers.

He is the co-director of the company, but he does not own the walls that surround him.

“People hear ‘Black Wall Street’ and think it is completely black controlled. In fact, it isn’t, ”he says.

Ransom estimates that there are around 20 African-American-owned businesses in Greenwood, all of which pay rent.

“We don’t own the land,” he said.

An urban planning policy, known as urban renewal, carried out by the town hall of Tulsa since the 1960s, had the effect of expelling African-American owners whose houses or businesses, deemed dilapidated, were demolished to make way for new buildings.

The construction of a seven-lane freeway crossing the center of Main Street has finished disfiguring the neighborhood.

“Back when Greenwood was Greenwood, you had 40 blocks, and now it’s all condensed into a half street … and even that half street still isn’t really Black Wall Street,” Ransom said. in wishpering.

AFP

Conocé The Trust Project