5/19/2021
Congressional Hearing on Tulsa Race Massacre
Breaking Newstags: Tulsa Massacre
A House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing marking the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, when a white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Three of the oldest living survivors delivered testimony and shared their childhood experiences and lives following the massacre. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) who chaired the subcommittee, told members there would be questions posed to the survivors, but it was an opportunity for lawmakers to listen. Viola Fletcher, who is now 107 years old, told lawmakers she lives through the massacre everyday, only finishing school through the fourth grade and being a domestic worker for most of her life. Her brother, 100-year-old Hughes Van Ellis told members “we are not asking for a handout...we are asking for justice.” Lessie Benningfield Randle, who spoke remotely, accused the city and local entities of fundraising and profiting off the massacre without permission or consideration to the survivors. “They owe us something. They owe me something…my opportunities were taken from me,” she told lawmakers.
Note: while the video of the hearing is embedded in entirety here, you may click through to the source on CSPAN, where a sidebar menu has highlights of the testimony starred.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel