Nearly 100 years ago, mobs of white residents descended on Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, ransacking Black businesses and murdering hundreds of African Americans. The Tulsa Race Massacre was one of the worst incidents of racist violence in our nation's history.
I had the chance to visit the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre—a terrible chapter in our nation's history.
While we can never undo this hateful act of domestic terrorism or the pain and suffering it inflicted on the Black community, we all must do our part to dismantle the legacy of systemic racism and oppression that was left in its wake—and that starts with justice and opportunity.
The men responsible for killing hundreds of innocent African Americans committed an act of domestic terrorism, but they were never held accountable. The search for the victims’ mass graves continues to this day, as does the domestic terrorism threat of white nationalism.
In a Warren administration, we will use every tool we have to defeat white nationalist violence and associated acts of terror. elizabethwarren.com/plans/confront…
Black Wall Street was defined by the human spirit. So the community was rebuilt relatively quickly, peaking in the 1940s. But it declined in the sixties and seventies because of gentrification and failure to have a systematic mentorship process in place.
For generations, the federal government has prevented African Americans from building wealth and financial security. It's time for our government to acknowledge its actions and step in to make opportunity available for African American communities. elizabethwarren.com/plans/agenda-b…
And we do that by investing in Black Americans and creating opportunity. The fights for social, racial, and economic justice belong to all of us—and when I’m president, that truth will inform our policies and our actions.
