To Be Equal: Federal review of Tulsa Race Massacre will prevent it from being lost to history

Adobe Stock Photo by Marc H.& Morial& (TriceEdneyWire.com)—“We acknowledge descendants of the survivors, and the victims continue to bear the trauma of this act of racial terrorism. We have no expectation that there are living perpetrators who could be criminally prosecuted by us or by the state. We honor the legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre survivors, Emmett Till, the Act that bears his name, this country and the truth by conducting our own review and evaluation of the massacre. In the words of Ida B. Wells, one of this nation’s most staunch antilynching advocates, ‘The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.’”—Assistant U.S. Attorney for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke For nearly 100 years, few Americans knew the story of one of the most heinous acts of racial terrorism in our history. Pages were ripped from surviving copies of the local newspaper to erase it from the archives. It was only in the last few years that Oklahoma public schools added the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre to the official curriculum. Now, an official investigation the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department will shine the light of the federal government on the Massacre,...