Donald Trump’s decision to stage a campaign rally in a sports stadium in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is spurring a renewed push for reparations for the racial massacre that devastated the city’s black community just 10 blocks away from where the president will be speaking on Saturday.

 

Trump’s appearance at the indoor BOK Center in downtown Tulsa is generating fears that it could spread coronavirus and exacerbate racial tensions amid the overwhelmingly peaceful protests following the death in police custody of George Floyd.

But his scheduled visit is also providing a boost to a justice movement that has coalesced around the 1921 massacre that struck a thriving area of the city known as “Black Wall Street”.

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“The visit is galvanising people,” said Damario Solomon-Simmons, a civil rights lawyer who represents the last known survivor of the massacre living in Tulsa. “We are all very concerned about Trump coming to Tulsa as he creates violence and intimidation among his supporters, but on the other end it has put the spotlight on the massacre.”

The Tulsa race massacre is widely considered to be one of the worst single acts of racial violence in US history. It erupted over a 24-hour period on the night of 31 May 1921.

The trigger of the attack was a call to lynch a black man for assaulting a white woman based on flimsy evidence. The wider context was that by the 1920s Greenwood had become one of the most vibrant black communities in the country boasting many successful businesses – hence its moniker “Black Wall Street”.

Source: Trump rally in Tulsa spurs renewed call for 1921 racial massacre reparations