On Juneteenth Let Us Remember, Racial Terror Did Not End with Slavery

When Terence Crutcher, a father of four who sang in his church choir, was shot and killed by the police in 2016 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his twin sister Dr. Tiffany Crutcher saw history repeating itself. Terence, who had his hands up, needed help but instead received a bullet. It was fired by the same police department that 95 years earlier had deputized members of the lynch mob that started the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. It reminded Dr. Crutcher of perhaps the most prominent victim of that Massacre, the renowned surgeon Dr. A.C. Jackson. Dr. Jackson was shot leaving his house, also with his hands in the air. The Crutchers are direct descendants of a survivor of the 1921 Massacre, which destroyed Tulsa’s historic Greenwood District. Dr. Crutcher is also a leader of the movement to get official recognition of and restitution for that destruction. I was honored to stand with members of that movement in Tulsa this past week to commemorate the Juneteenth holiday. The Tulsa Race Massacre was probably the single worst incident of racial violence in American history post-slavery. Over an 18-hour period, as many as 300 Black residents were murdered. More than 10,000 others were displaced as...