USAfrica: Tulsa Black Massacre of 100 years ago: Lessons for Nigeria, Africa.
By Chido Nwangwu. Founder & Publisher of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet, USAfricaonline.com and USAfrica magazine (Houston)
“I am 107 years old and have never seen justice. I pray that one day I will. I have been blessed with a long life — and have seen the best and worst of this country. I think about the terror inflicted upon Black people in this country every day…. They burned houses and businesses. They just took what they wanted out of the buildings then they burned them. They murdered people. We were told they just dumped the dead bodies into the river…. I remember running outside of our house. I ran past dead bodies. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I still see it today in my mind — 100 years later,” recalls the great grand dame, Viola Fletcher, in her heartbreaking testimony on Wednesday, May 19, 2021 before one of the US House of Representatives Judiciary subcommittees.
The Tulsa race massacre took place on 100 years ago, precisely on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when racially-violent mobs of White people who lived within and around the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma attacked and killed hundreds of Black residents, burnt their homes and businesses, injuring almost 1000 individuals.
The successful district famously known as the Black Wall Street was sadly burnt into ashes within those frightening and bloody two days of incendiary terror.
As I watched this brave woman of history calmly but effectively make her points, as she took the entire America and the world to a painful yet important history lesson, she instantly reached the minds and hearts of many people to some of the brutalities and deprivations suffered by African-Americans in these United States!
As I listened to this embodiment of history and witness bearer, I salute the power of her factual narrative, the timeless dignity of her morality — driven by truth. I am touched by her sense of self amidst the communal agonies and the racially organized assault on Black identity and Black progress. EVEN AFTER 100 YEARS, SHE WANTED THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE INJUSTICE THE MASSACRE of 1921.
In his testimony, Viola’s younger brother Hughes Van Ellis who was born around the time of Tulsa Massacre of Blacks, said “We were left with nothing. We were made refugees in our own country.” He underscored the point of their law suit filed in 2020 by the Tulsa African Ancestral Society, Vernon A.M.E Church (and other descendants of other victims) that although Greenwood residents and the Black Wall Street lost close to $100 million in property damage: “We’re not asking for a handout. All we are asking for is for a chance to be treated like a first-class citizen who truly is a beneficiary of the promise that this is a land where there is ‘liberty and justice for all…. We are asking for justice for a lifetime of ongoing harm. Harm that was caused by the massacre.”
On his part, Lessie Benningfield Randle connected the generational impact of the destruction and deprivations and neglect and discrimination:
“They owe us something. They owe me something. I have lived much of my life poor. My opportunities were taken from me and my community. North Tulsa, Black Tulsa, is still messed up today. They didn’t rebuild it. It’s empty. It’s a ghetto.”
Which means it’s never too late to make amends. It’s never too late to say “I’m sorry.” It’s never too late to embrace and integrate with honesty and fairness any/all section of any country that suffered or continue to go through premeditated deprivations, evident hostility, violence and discrimination.
Unless people are awash in the rivers of healing, conciliation and rehabilitations, the traumas linger and conflicts persist. Hence, it is such a ridiculous, perennial drift in Nigeria to read the weekly tantrums and divisive condescensions from its rulers and those hangers on who intoxicated by the whiff of temporary, transient political power viciously insult and attack an Ijaw, an Efik, an Igbo, a Bini, a Tiv, a Bachama, a Kataf, an Ibibio and/or any other ethnic nationality who wants to “dialogue” or “discuss” issues of recent agonies and past injustices are told to pick one of two options, especially, if you’re from the Igbo South East: “shut up” or be declared a “Area Commander of IPOB & ESN”. Worse, in their fevered imagination, you’ll be labeled “Biafran Boy!” These medieval gangsters may never understand the Igbo and the political economy of ethnic agitation and nationalism.
Anyway, let me close with these haunting words of the petite but towering great grand ma, Viola Fletcher:
“I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre every day.”
*Dr. Chido Nwangwu, the author of the forthcoming 2021 book, MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power, Leadership and Identity, serves as Founder & Publisher of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, and established USAfrica in 1992 in Houston. He is recipient of several public policy and journalism excellence honors, civic engagement and community empowerment awards and has appeared as an analyst on CNN and SKYnews. He served as an adviser on Africa business to Houston’s former Mayor Lee Brown. @Chido247
