U.S. President Joe Biden will take part in a remembrance of one of the nation's darkest -- and largely forgotten -- moments of racial violence, marking the 100th anniversary of a massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that wiped out a thriving Black community.
Biden's visit Tuesday, in which he will grieve for the more than 300 Black people killed at the hands of a white mob a century ago, comes amid a national reckoning on racial justice. And it will stand in stark contrast to the last presidential visit to Tulsa, which took place last year.
The attackers killed up to 300 Black Tulsans and forced survivors for a time into internment camps overseen by National Guard members. Burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that survive today of the more than 30-block historically Black district. Chauvin was convicted in April, but Biden said the country's work was far from finished with the verdict, declaring, "We can't stop here."
"This is so important because we have to recognize what we have done if we are going to be otherwise," said Eddie Glaude, chair of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. Biden's visit "has to be more than symbolic. To tell the truth is the precondition for reconciliation, and reconciliation is the basis for repair."
Reparations for Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved and for other racial discrimination have been debated in the U.S. since slavery ended in 1865. Now they are being discussed by colleges and universities with ties to slavery and by local governments looking to make cash payments to Black residents.
Biden, who served as vice president to the nation's first Black president and selected a Black woman as his own vice president, backs a study of reparations, both in Tulsa and more broadly, but has not committed to supporting payments.
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