Un-censoring the past…

DOJ Unearths More Details From Tulsa Massacre

Greenwood

As I wrote back in 2023, no site in America provides a more haunting reminder of the danger of censoring our history than Greenwood, Oklahoma.

Just over a century ago, an angry white mob destroyed this thriving neighborhood in Tulsa, then known as Black Wall St. The violence killed hundreds, and robbed generations of a future their forbears had built for them.

For years, it was labeled as a “race riot”—a classic “both sides” of a horrific and deadly, racist attack on a thriving Black community. Survivors were afraid to talk about what really happened, for fear of violent retribution, so their stories were largely lost. And it’s too rarely taught in schools, like so much other violence that’s taken place in our nation whenever Black Americans have succeeded politically or economically.

When I visited Tulsa in the summer of 2023, the morning that I left, I walked down to Greenwood from my hotel. And while it was closed, I was thrilled to see the sparkling new center: “Greenwood Rising—Black Wall St. Historic Center.”

Adorning one side is the perfect James Baldwin quote on why it’s so important that we teach and face our real history: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

As I traveled home, I ordered a book to learn more:

It was a painful read, providing far more details of the brutality and violence of the massacre itself, and then the spirited effort to whitewash it all in the weeks, months and years that followed.

One of the starkest lessons from the book, highly relevant to today: “it is clear that the single most important precipitating ingredient…was the manner in which the Tulsa Tribune “covered” the Rowland-Page incident. [An allegation that a Black man had assaulted a White teenage girl that was later dismissed]. Indeed, the newspaper’s specific coverage, and not what actually transpired in the Drexel building, IS the incident….and the single most important force…in the creation of the lynch mob outside of the courthouse.” And that lynch mob was what triggered the murder and mayhem that followed.

Then, and now, media dedicated to propaganda as opposed to truth can do enormous damage, including spurring deadly violence.

Why do I write all this today?

Because recently and to its credit, the DOJ decided to treat this as a “Cold Case,” and yesterday, released a detailed report providing even more details about what happened, including the involvement of Tulsa police in the violence.

As the report starts off: “The trigger for the violence of the Tulsa Race Massacre was the kind of unfounded condemnation that, at the time, commonly justified unspeakable treatment of Black men. The allegations of a white man led police to arrest 19-year-old Dick Rowland for allegedly assaulting a white woman who operated an elevator he used. A local newspaper then sensationalized the story, and soon a mob of white Tulsans gathered outside the courthouse, demanding a lynching.”

As the Assistant AG for Civil Rights said in announcing the report:

“Until this day, the Justice Department has not spoken publicly about this race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa. This report breaks that silence by rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation’s past. This report lays bare new information and shows that the massacre was the result not of uncontrolled mob violence, but of a coordinated, military-style attack on Greenwood. Now, more than 100 years later, there is no living perpetrator for the Justice Department to prosecute. But the historical reckoning for the massacre continues. This report reflects our commitment to the pursuit of justice and truth.”

Sadly, the victims of the massacre never experienced the justice they were and are owed. And the truth was buried for far too long.

But having an official government account—for the first time—set the record straight on what really happened is an important step.

You can read it all HERE.

Day 41 — January 10, 2025

The final jobs report of 2024 showed another 256,000 jobs added in December 2024, with unemployment dipping to 4.1%. It was the 48th month in a row of growth, the second longest on record, and makes Joe Biden the first president in history to not have a single month with job losses.

Remember these numbers.

Trump inherited a strong economy in 2016-2017, and by 2019, his policies had already squandered it. Ohio lost jobs between January 2019 and January 2020 (before COVID hit), the first year of job loss since the Great Recession. Since he’s promising the same policies (or even more extreme ones), I expect the same squandering to happen.