President Joe Biden looks at a photograph during a tour of the Greenwood Cultural Centre to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. Photo / AP
President Joe Biden looks at a photograph during a tour of the Greenwood Cultural Centre to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. Photo / AP
Joe Biden pledged to narrow America's racial wealth gap through billions of dollars in investments in minority communities as he commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre on Tuesday.
The US President was expected to meet privately with the last surviving victims of the 1921 massacre in Greenwood, an affluent area of Tulsa, Oklahoma known as the "Black Wall Street" which was destroyed by a white mob.
The Tulsa Race Massacre is seared in our consciousness. In remembering, we honor all those lost and their generations of descendants. Our continued efforts to tell the unvarnished truth @NMAAHC are a testament to our founding mission and to us all. #ApeoplesJourney#Tulsa100pic.twitter.com/fvPdRqed3B
Around 300 black residents were killed during the May 31 and June 1 rioting, one of the country's worst instances of racial violence, with thousands of homes and businesses razed to the ground.
During his visit, Biden is set to announce a raft of measures to narrow the vast disparities in black and white Americans' wealth through direct government investment in minority-owned businesses and efforts to expand access to home ownership.
"Because disparities in wealth compound like an interest rate, the disinvestment in Black families in Tulsa and across the country throughout our history is still felt sharply today," the White House said.
It noted that the median black American household has just 13c for every $1 in wealth held by white families.
The measures to address the disparities include investing $31 billion in programmes for minority-owned small businesses and directing $100 billion in federal contracts to small, disadvantaged businesses over the next five years.
The White House said it also aims to pump $10 billion into regenerating neighbourhoods like Greenwood, that suffer from chronic poverty and under investment.
100 years ago today, The Tulsa Race Massacre happened in the affluent black community of Greenwood in Tulsa known as the Black Wall Street.
White supremacists killed more than 300 African Americans. They looted and burned to ground black homes and businesses. pic.twitter.com/DkwkNIXd3r
— AFRICAN & BLACK HISTORY (@africanarchives) May 31, 2021
Another key proposal is to boost black home ownership by creating an inter-agency task force to address unfair lending practices and discrimination in the appraisals of housing in black neighbourhoods.
A significant portion of the funding outlined by the White House will come from Mr Biden's proposed infrastructure legislation, which Congress has yet to take up.
Pictures from the Tulsa Race Massacre at the First Baptist Tulsa church. Photo / AP
Officials said the measures were intended to signal the Biden administration's new emphasis on racial equality and justice for black Americans.
However, the proposals were met with criticism from the country's largest civil rights organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), because it failed to tackle crippling student debts.
Some research suggests that forgiving student loans, which disproportionately impacts black graduates, would be one of the most effective ways to shrink the racial wealth gap
This is how the media reported the Tulsa Race Massacre, where as many as 300 Black people were murdered. pic.twitter.com/sMBB5SXtQY
"You cannot begin to address the racial wealth gap without addressing the student loan debt crisis. You just can't address one without the other. Plain and simple," said NAACP president Derrick Johnson
Biden's visit comes just weeks after the Tulsa Massacre's oldest survivor, Viola Fletcher, testified before Congress about the incident for the first time.
"I am 107 years old and have never seen justice. I pray that one day I will," she told Congress. "I have been blessed with a long life and have seen the best and the worst of this country. I think about the horror inflicted upon black people in this country every day."
President Joe Biden arrives to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, at the Greenwood Cultural Centre. Photo / AP
The massacre was sparked by the arrest of a black teenager, Dick Rowland, who was accused of stepping on the foot of a white girl, Sarah Page.
The case was later dismissed but an angry white mob descended on Greenwood, one of the country's most prosperous black communities at the time, systematically looting and burning homes and businesses.
The massacre was largely hushed up and Biden is the first US president to visit Tulsa to commemorate the incident.
"I am 107 years old and have never seen justice."
The oldest living survivor of the Tulsa race massacre, when hundreds of Black residents were killed by mobs of white people, called for justice in a powerful testimony nearly 100 years later... pic.twitter.com/XDv7tT0xee
Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, visited Tulsa last year under vastly different circumstances.
The Republican president planned a rally in Tulsa on June 19, known as Juneteenth in the US to mark the end of slavery, at a time of heightened racial tensions following the death of George Floyd.
After a public backlash, Trump moved the rally to June 20.
