An event to mark the centenary of one of the worst race massacres has been cancelled in a dispute over payments to descendants of three hundred black Americans and three living survivors.
White mobs destroyed 35 blocks of Tulsa in Oklahoma during a two-day rampage in 1921, also known as the Black Wall Street Massacre because it targeted the wealthiest African-American community in the country.
The Tulsa massacre was covered up for decades but the remains of its victims are still being found in the Greenwood area, where a community of free black Americans prospered until the attack. It happened after a black man was arrested for the alleged assault of a white woman and a white lynch mob clashed with a group of armed black First World War veterans who came to stop the hanging. Firebombs were dropped on the black district and its residents were shot in the streets.
Plans for a concert today featuring the singer John Legend and the voting rights campaigner Stacey Abrams collapsed after a lawyer for the three living survivors, aged 100, 106 and 107, raised their request for payment for attending from $100,000 to $1 million each. A second request for proceeds from the ticketed concert for a fund for heirs of those who lost their lives, homes or businesses was increased from $2 million to $50 million.
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission said it was not able to agree to the last-minute terms and called off the event but plans to go ahead with a candlelit vigil tonight.
President Biden was due to visit Tulsa to mark the 100th anniversary of the day the Oklahoma national guard restored order. Biden made the “advance of racial equity and civil rights” one of the four priorities of his administration and is urging Congress to pass a law reforming police practice in the name of George Floyd.
Tensions were running high in Tulsa over the weekend with a march by the armed New Black Panther Party on Saturday through Greenwood. As part of a gathering to demand reparations for slavery and other injustices to African-Americans, the Panthers shut down streets.
