June 6, 2021
GREATER HOUSTON EDITION
Vol. 26, Issue 20
who police the police? “Addressing Current & Historical Realties Affecting Our Community”
Attacks on the Black vote continue
By: AANI staff
‘Black Wall Street’ was NOT the first massacre!
By: Roy Douglas Malonson
There are things they don’t teach our children in school, because they want to make us and the atrocities committed against us disappear. Yes, they teach a watered-down version of the Slave trade, but they try to sweep under the rug the mob mentality and mass murder of an entire Black community that was flourishing with wealth and progress. Not many of our children have ever heard of Black Wall Street, they have only heard of Black poverty. They had no idea that – once upon a time in Tulsa, Oklahoma – Blacks were living well and had an entire community filled with Black-owned businesses before jealousy and lies fueled by racism and hate gave whites the “excuse” to go on a blood-thirsty tirade against us and wipe us out 100 years ago. This year marks a century since the Tulsa Race Massacre that led to the murder of almost 300 Black people and thousands of arrests for no reason. Black
Wall Street was destroyed in two days by land and air attacks. Initiated by inflammatory reports (or flat-out lies) about a 19-year-old Black man offending a 17-yearold White female in an elevator. A white mob supported by law enforcement stormed into the all Black district, Greenwood. and a fleet of men came with torches to set fire to homes and businesses. Thousands of African Americans were then imprisoned. Property losses cost over $1 million which is over $20 million in today’s dollars. The Greenwood district was one of the most prosperous and self-sufficient of all-Black communities in the nation. Its destruction has greatly impacted descendants for generations. Fear of punishment kept the massacre from being passed down in earlier generations. Blacks who remained in the area suffered trauma with memories of the attack and watched Massacre cont’d page 3
Gov. Greg Abbott made a bold statement this week, threatening there will be “no pay for those who abandon their responsibilities.” in response to a walkout in the state House of Representatives by Democrats. The walkout was initiated by Texas Democrats in order to prevent the passage of legislation they feel will restrict voting rights. Just minutes before the midnight deadline, opposers headed for the exit doors, temporarily derailing a controversial new voting law that would affect millions of people. The revolt is one of Democrats’ biggest protests to date against GOP efforts nationwide to impose stricter election laws. Abbott is compelling state lawmakers to return for a special session, saying the election integrity bill is a must pass emergency. Abbott says the new bill would lower the standard for overturning future election outcomes, eliminate drive-thru and 24-hour voting, require proof of identity on absentee ballots, making it illegal to send unsolicited applications. We all know what this really is – AN ATTACK OF THE BLACK VOTE! As more than a dozen states enact tighter voting restrictions, which seem more like a coverup for voter suppression tactics, Dems are urging President Joe Biden to take action. Meanwhile, Abbott is threatening to use his power to veto to move the Republican agenda forward. - AANI
“OUR VOTE AND OUR MONEY ARE THE TWO MOST POWERFUL THINGS WE HAVE. BE CAREFUL WHO YOU GIVE THEM TO.” - ROY DOUGLAS MALONSON
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June 6, 2021
EDITORIAL
President/Chief Editor
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Griselda Ramirez: Production
Food for Thought Oscar Blayton
Office: (713) 692-1892 Wednesday – Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Bombing Greenwood & America Centennials are usually celebratory affairs. Marking the passing of 100 years since a significant event, by its nature, can occur only once. For this reason, it is no surprise that people take these opportunities to conduct parades, give speeches and enjoy a hearty, self-administered pat on the back. But when the significant event 100 years in the past is one of mass murder and a glaring manifestation of the race hatred that has been endemic in America since its founding, centennials take on a different significance. Revisiting a horrific event such as the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on its 100th anniversary brings with it a need for reflection that does not generate self-congratulation. Rather, it requires a measurement and evaluation of the quality of progress – or lack of
progress – in improving race relations and ensuring equal justice for all people that is promised in the Constitution. For months, in anticipation of the Tulsa race massacre centennial, accounts of that slaughter have been viewed through different lenses. While African Americans have called for closer scrutiny and a more in-depth examination of the wildly racist bloodbath that was nothing less than a mass lynching, they were met with resolute denials of proven facts by powerful conservatives in state and local government. This is not surprising to Blacks, Asians, Native Americans and other people of color in America, who have witnessed attempts to obliterate the memories of the absolute inhumanity demonstrated by the colonializing and enslaving class of invading Europeans. For people of color, these efforts to wipe out the truth of history create an existential crisis, a crisis that has existed for more than 400 years. One of the aspects of the Tulsa race massacre that has been shrouded with denial is the fact that the
Greenwood community in Tulsa suffered aerial bombardment. Recent accounts of the massacre acknowledge that multiple airplanes flew over Greenwood, dropping explosives onto the Black victims below. But this fact was denied for years by members of Tulsa’s white community. However, the recent discovery of a 10-page, typewritten eyewitness account by Buck Colbert Franklin, a lawyer and the father of famed historian John Hope Franklin, stated that a dozen or more airplanes dropped explosive devices on the Greenwood community. B.C. Franklin’s account is now housed in the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Those defenders of the myth of a just America long argued that it was a moral impossibility that a city government would participate in the aerial bombing of Americans in an American city. But facts are stubborn things and they do not abide the corruption of history. Almost to the day, 64 years after the Tulsa race massacre, a municipal government dropped another
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bomb on Americans in another American city. On May 13, 1985, the Police Department of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, bombed a residential home occupied by members of a Black politically active group known as MOVE. This incident, known as the MOVE bombing, was sanctioned by the Philadelphia city government and resulted in the murder of six adults and five children. In addition to the destruction of the targeted home, 61 neighboring houses in the Black neighborhood were destroyed by the ensuing fire and more than 250 people were left homeless. It is reported that the city’s firefighters were held back from using their high-powered water cannons until the fire had raged for an hour and a half. Ramona Africa, one of the two survivors of the attack, reported that police fired at MOVE members trying to escape their burning house. There have been three incidents of Americans suffering aerial bombardment on American soil. The most well-known is the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941,
resulting in loyal Japanese Americans being unjustly interned in concentration camps and stripped of their property. The other two instances are the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and the 1985 MOVE bombing, neither of which resulted in any arrests or negative consequences for the perpetrators. Walter White, an African American NAACP undercover investigator who could pass for white, traveled to Tulsa after the massacre to survey the carnage and damage to property and wrote a scathing report. He concluded: “What is America going to do after such a horrible carnage—one that for sheer brutality and murderous anarchy cannot be surpassed by any of the crimes now being charged to the Bolsheviki in Russia? How much longer will America allow these pogroms to continue unchecked? … Perhaps America is waiting for a nationwide Tulsa to wake her. Who knows?” We cannot assume that this type of atrocity could never happen again because, in America, there is no such thing as a moral impossibility. - AANI
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Massacre cont’d as the places they once owned were taken over by white business owners. The state Legislature created the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 in 1997. The study ended in a final report in 2001 that found that the city of Tulsa planned to destroy the Greenwood district. Jealous whites were waiting on the opportunity to go in, destroy and kill. But what about the Black people who deserve reparations? How do they retrieve what was stolen? “This Commission fully understands that it is neither judge nor jury. We have no binding legal authority to assign culpability, to determine damages, to establish a remedy, or to order either restitution or reparations,” commissioners wrote. The report suggested that reparations to the Greenwood community “would be good public policy and do much to repair the emotional and physical scars of this terrible incident in our shared past.” The commission’s report found that almost 40 blocks in Greenwood were destroyed, leaving nearly 10,000 African Americans homeless. Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum says that while there is public support for addressing disparities Black Tulsans face,
there is deep opposition to cash reparations. “Where does that come from?” he asks. “It would necessarily have to come from a tax levied on this generation of Tulsans and the idea of financially penalizing this generation of Tulsans for something criminals did 100 years ago; that’s a hard thing to ask.” Even so, survivors and descendants still deserve what they are rightfully owed. A lawsuit against Tulsa is demanding financial compensation, tax abatement, mental health services, and redistribution of land to the families of the original Greenwood district. But did you know… Greenwood was NOT the first massacre of its kind! Massacres happened in New Orleans (1866), New York (1863), Memphis (1866), Opelousas (1868), Memphis (1866), St. Bernard Parish (1868), Camila (1868), Colfax (1873), Vicksburg (1874), Eufaula (1874), Clinton (1875), Thibadaux (1887), Wilmington (1898), Atlanta (1906), Springfield (1908), Slocum (1910), East St. Louis (1917), Elaine (1919), Chicago (1919), Washington (1919), Ocee (1920), Tulsa (1921), Rosewood (1923), Detroit (1943), Philadelphia (1985), Charleston (2015) and so many others many don’t know about. Another example is when a white mob killed
needs to to shortened to about 630 words
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