Black fear of Tulsa police lingers 100 years after massacre
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — There’s been undeniable progress in the relationship between the Tulsa police and the city's Black community in the past 100 years. Then again, it’s hard to imagine it could have gotten worse.
Complaints about police bias and a lack of enough minority officers remain. But the police chief is now a Black man from north Tulsa, the area that includes what once was America’s wealthiest Black business district.
Back in 1921 — decades before the Civil Rights Movement — even the thought of a Black police chief would have been inconceivable. That year, Greenwood — the Black north Tulsa neighborhood that includes the area known as Black Wall Street — was burned to the ground with assistance from the virtually all-white Tulsa Police Department. Sparked by accusations that a 19-year-old Black man had assaulted a 17-year-old white girl in an elevator, the Tulsa Race Massacre left as many as 300 Black people dead and thousands of Black residents displaced. Thirty-five square blocks were torched and damages spiraled into the millions.
Tulsa’s police department deputized white mobs and provided them with arms. Numerous reports describe white men with badges setting fires and shooting Black people as part of the Greenwood invasion. According to an Associated Press article from the time, Black people who were driven from their homes by the hundreds shouted, “Don’t shoot!” as they rushed through the flames.
After the massacre went largely ignored for decades, awareness has increased in recent years. Police Chief Chuck Jordan stood in Greenwood in 2013 and apologized for the department’s role.
“I can’t apologize for the actions, inaction or derelictions of those individual officers and their chief,” Jordan said. “But as your chief today, I can apologize for our police department. I am sorry and distressed that the Tulsa Police Department did not protect its citizens during the tragic days in 1921.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-fear-of-tulsa-police-lingers-100-years-after-massacre/ar-AAKvM5x
