In addition to being Memorial Day, yesterday was also the hundredth anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. Commemorating Memorial Day is acceptable because we consider it patriotic to commemorate days when we believe the reason that people died was proper. We want to forget those anniversaries that challenge our assumptions of who we are as a people and a Nation.
The 1920 Census lists about 12 percent of Tulsa’s population as Negro, about 8800 out of 72,000; by 1930 the population of Tulsa had doubled but its black population had dropped significantly. The 2010 Census states 15.6 percent of Tulsa is Black in a city of 391,000. But Greenwood, the area destroyed in 1921, no longer exists.
Before Tulsa in the summer of 1919, there were anti-Black riots and massacres in cities such as Chicago and l towns such as Elaine, Arkansas. The 1920s saw a resurgence in lynchings and other forms of violence against Blacks, but we didn’t read about those events in high school. It’s almost as if we have a national amnesia about such violence. Remembering is the first step towards healing and we have a lot of healing yet to do.
Prayer for the Day
We know we have failed you in ways we are afraid to acknowledge,
And we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed;
Help us to move beyond our false images, O God of mercy,
And to be open to forgiveness and reconciliation.
We ask for the joy from living a new life in your love and care,
And the healing that arises out of recompense and justice.
In the name of him who taught us a new way to live,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.
Thurgood Marshall, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1908-1993)
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me.
Psalm 51: 10-11