Trump’s Date Change for Tulsa Rally is No Less Insensitive to Black People: Juneteenth, and the Memory of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre
By: Rev. Jerrolyn Eulinberg, PhD
Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative cohort member
Independent scholar, ordained minister in the A.M.E. Church
The decision by Donald Trump and his administration to host their first Republican campaign rally since COVID-19 in the heartland of Tulsa was not only insensitive to hear, but a disgrace to the sacred and historical memory of “Black Wall Street,” the “1921 Tulsa Massacre,” and the Juneteenth holiday. Although the rally date has now been changed to Saturday – June 20th, this does not make Trump’s rally any more palatable for African Americans in Tulsa or around the country. Black people and others are still trying to process and recover from the national trauma associated with George Floyd’s death. For Trump to plan a rally gathering in Tulsa at all, particularly following the 99th memorial year of Black Wall Street and the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, where hundreds of Black people were killed because of racism, and in a city that still has not recovered from the racial divide, it further traumatizes Black people in this country. The real question is – where is the sensitivity to Black peoples’ experience and when does the value of Black life matter? Let us not forget the rally will now begin just one day after Juneteenth.
As a native Tulsan, I am compelled to decry the plan to convene in Tulsa as an affront to liberty and justice for all.
This year’s Juneteenth celebration is cancelled out of concern and safety from the coronavirus. A Republican convention in this moment is ill-advised and insulting. It feels like a traumatic resurgence of the economic, political, and social evil that gave rise to the race massacre, and which enshrouds our collective memory in the region. As president, Trump offers no consolation to African Americans during this current time of terror on Black life and compounds this historic event with blatant disregard for the impact to Black lives. As a native Tulsan, I am compelled to decry the plan to convene in Tulsa as an affront to liberty and justice for all.
For most Blacks in this country - the traumatic and horrific “terror of memory” resulting from slavery, lynching, and racism is triggered every time African American people experience another public execution of Black life. When the recorded video of George Floyd’s public lynching played for the world to see, thousands of people around the world were appalled and outraged as well. But African Americans felt traumatized and terrorized because the video images are reminiscent of the wholesale brutality that characterizes the lynching terror, which Ida B. Wells-Barnett, among others, so vociferously amplified through written protest. Floyd’s death came on the heels of so many other contemporary lynchings such as Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Terence Crutcher, Laquan McDonald and the list goes on. The on-going deaths-by-police are not erased from Black consciousness, but they illuminate the serious challenges this nation has with white supremacy, white privilege, and the hegemonic power, functioning through structural racism and oppression, which results in the constant terrorism that Black people are living through in America.
President Trump’s photo-op underscores the connection to a dictatorial military state, and the continuum of violence against human beings that signals a death-dealing parallelism to periods of enslavement and lynching. The tragedy in all of this - most of these continuous violent acts of terror are with impunity. How long will African Americans have to endure the pain of systemic racism and the injustice of white supremacy? How long will we be considered invaluable? How long will we be treated as a disposable race?
Juneteenth – officially occurs on June 19th, usually celebrated throughout the week. This celebration has a long history of sacred practice for Blacks in America. Juneteenth represents the delayed news of freedom or liberation for Black people. After two hundred and forty-six years of chattel slavery African Americans in Texas finally received the good news that slavery had ended, almost two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. One can imagine the joy found in this news. Unfortunately, the dehumanizing experience of slavery classified Black life as invaluable. This tainted and distorted view is deeply imbedded into the fabric of America. Juneteenth is a time of sacred remembrance, and people gather to celebrate the value of Black life. When Black lives are valued, they will no longer be killed in the streets “hunted and penned.”
Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
The 1921 destruction of Greenwood. (University of Tulsa)
Black Wall Street, located in Tulsa, was the wealthiest Black business district across the country in 1921. Just 56 years out of slavery this Greenwood residential district and business district was burgeoning among a great oil boom in Tulsa, yet African Americans were isolated and ostracized from the white areas in Tulsa because of racism. Blacks were self-sufficient, valued themselves, one another, and their faith; together they thrived. However, when a Black 19-year-old teenager named Dick Rowland was accused of raping a 17-year-old white girl the city exploded. As thousand of whites gathered on the courthouse steps to remove Rowland from the jail and lynch him, the Black World War I Veterans and others said “no." Hundreds of white men were deputized and armed to attack the Greenwood District. On May 31st and June 1st whites looted the Black community, Black Wall Street, and Greenwood were burned to the ground. Hundreds died, blocks and businesses demolished. Over 10,000 Blacks lived in tents the winter of 1921-1922. 2020 marks the 99th year of the sacred memory and sacred ground of the Tulsa Massacre. This is the year and time in history that the Republican National Convention comes to Tulsa? President Trump, what are you celebrating?