If recognition alone were capable of repairing harm, then the weeks surrounding the Tulsa Race Massacre's 100th anniversary in 2021 might have begun to make the neighborhood of Greenwood whole. Oklahoma's Republican and Democratic elected officials clamored to release public statements praising the commemoration. President Biden told an audience at Tulsa's Greenwood Cultural Center, 'For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness.' Having grown up in Tulsa, I found the pageantry of the centennial'the opening of a history center on Greenwood Avenue, the news crews that covered the events, and the concerts'unfamiliar, yet, for the moment, welcome. The problem was what happened before'and has happened since: running down the clock on justice. At the time of the centenary, there were three living survivors: Lessie Benningfield Randle, Hughes Van Ellis, and his sister, Viola Ford Fletcher. That year, they had shared eyewitness accounts of...
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