
President Joe Biden will take part in a remembrance of one of the nation’s darkest — and largely forgotten — moments of racial violence when he helps commemorate the 100th anniversary of the destruction of a thriving Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Biden’s visit Tuesday, in which he will grieve for the hundreds of Black people killed by a white mob a century ago, comes amid a national reckoning on racial justice. And it will stand in stark contrast to the most recent visit to Tulsa by a president, which took place last year.
Biden will be the first president to participate in remembrances of the destruction of what was known as “Black Wall Street.” In 1921 — on May 31 and June 1 — Tulsa’s white residents and civil society leaders looted and burned to the ground the Greenwood district and used planes to drop projectiles on it.
He will meet privately with survivors of the massacre. Up to 300 Black Tulsans were killed, and 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.
America’s continuing struggle over racial justice will continue 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 has pledged to help combat racism in policing and other areas of life following nationwide protests after George Floyd’s death a year ago that reignited a national conversation about race. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.
After Chauvin was convicted in April, Biden said the country’s work was far from finished with the verdict, declaring, “We can’t stop here.”