American racist history cannot be buried! Tulsa and the Indian Removal Act remembered
Echo opinion published in the My Record-Journal, a Meridian Connecticut newspaper, written by Glen Richter:
By all accounts, the thriving business district, an area of 35 city blocks, was burned to the ground, a great many were killed — some of them by white Tulsans who had been deputized and given weapons by city officials — and thousands of people were left homeless as more than 1,000 houses were destroyed, along with two newspapers, a school, a library, a hospital, churches, hotels, stores and many other Black-owned businesses.
This was a pogrom, nearly as horrible as anything that was inflicted on European Jews in the bad old days.
So it’s odd that I don’t remember hearing a word about it in my American history class in high school. Maybe I was out sick that day.
But there was also the Trail of Tears. By the 1830s, white settlers had flooded into the Deep South, and many of them wanted to grow cotton on the plentiful land there. However, a lot of that land belonged to Native American tribes. Not a problem: President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which allowed the federal government to exchange Native-held land east of the Mississippi for land to the west that the U.S. had picked up in the Louisiana Purchase.
Thousands of Choctaws, Creeks, Cherokees and others were forced to walk hundreds of miles to Oklahoma. Thousands died along the way from disease, starvation or exhaustion.
Anyway, I had near-perfect attendance in high school — and I went out of my way to sign up for history courses — but I don’t recall a single mention of this atrocity. Was I out sick that day, too?
Wait a minute, here’s another one: Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcibly removing around 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes and businesses. They were sent to detention camps and many of them were ruined financially. The majority of these people were American citizens.
But, again, not a word of this do I remember learning about in school.
After a year when the news has been rife with Black people being killed by police for no reason … and Native Americans lacking medical care or even running water on their reservations … and Asian Americans being attacked in the street as if they’re responsible for the “China virus” ... this is a very good time for us to take a hard look at race relations in this country, and what can be done to make things better.
God bless America? Absolutely. But let’s not sweep her faults under the rug. Nothing gets better that way. Stand beside her, and guide her, as Kate Smith used to sing in God Bless America.
*Remarks by President Biden Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre
JUNE 02, 2021 SPEECHES AND REMARKS
Greenwood Cultural Center
Tulsa, Oklahoma
(June 1, 2021)
President Joe Biden* went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to help commemorate the race massacre that took place there 100 years ago.
A white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in the predominantly Black Greenwood neighborhood, looting and burning homes and businesses in one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history.
By all accounts, the thriving business district, an area of 35 city blocks, was burned to the ground, a great many were killed — some of them by white Tulsans who had been deputized and given weapons by city officials — and thousands of people were left homeless as more than 1,000 houses were destroyed, along with two newspapers, a school, a library, a hospital, churches, hotels, stores and many other Black-owned businesses.
This was a pogrom, nearly as horrible as anything that was inflicted on European Jews in the bad old days.
So it’s odd that I don’t remember hearing a word about it in my American history class in high school. Maybe I was out sick that day.
But there was also the Trail of Tears. By the 1830s, white settlers had flooded into the Deep South, and many of them wanted to grow cotton on the plentiful land there. However, a lot of that land belonged to Native American tribes. Not a problem: President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which allowed the federal government to exchange Native-held land east of the Mississippi for land to the west that the U.S. had picked up in the Louisiana Purchase.
 |
| Indian Removal Act May 28, 1830 |
Thousands of Choctaws, Creeks, Cherokees and others were forced to walk hundreds of miles to Oklahoma. Thousands died along the way from disease, starvation or exhaustion.
Anyway, I had near-perfect attendance in high school — and I went out of my way to sign up for history courses — but I don’t recall a single mention of this atrocity. Was I out sick that day, too?
Wait a minute, here’s another one: Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcibly removing around 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes and businesses. They were sent to detention camps and many of them were ruined financially. The majority of these people were American citizens.
But, again, not a word of this do I remember learning about in school.
After a year when the news has been rife with Black people being killed by police for no reason … and Native Americans lacking medical care or even running water on their reservations … and Asian Americans being attacked in the street as if they’re responsible for the “China virus” ... this is a very good time for us to take a hard look at race relations in this country, and what can be done to make things better.
God bless America? Absolutely. But let’s not sweep her faults under the rug. Nothing gets better that way. Stand beside her, and guide her, as Kate Smith used to sing in God Bless America.
Glenn Richter at grichter@record-journal.com.
*Remarks by President Biden Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre
JUNE 02, 2021 SPEECHES AND REMARKS
Greenwood Cultural Center
Tulsa, Oklahoma
(June 1, 2021)
Labels: Glen Richter, Greenwood, Kate Smith, My Record-Journal, Oklahoma, President Joe Biden, Trail of Tears
posted by Juliana L'Heureux | 7:14 AM
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