US President Joe Biden has become the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Tulsa, Oklahoma, site where hundreds of Black Americans were massacred by a white mob in 1921, as he marked the country’s legacy of racial violence.
Biden oversaw a moment of silence for the victims after meeting with three people who lived in the district during the massacre – Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis and Lessie Benningfield Randle – and toured a museum dedicated to the incident.
Addressing an audience which included survivors of the Tulsa race massacre and their families, Biden said he came to help fill the silence because in silence wounds deepen.
His administration also planned steps to combat inequality including efforts to expand federal contracting with small, disadvantaged businesses, invest tens of billions of dollars in communities and pursue new efforts to combat housing discrimination.
Now between the ages of 101 and 107, the survivors who met with Biden asked Congress for “justice” this year and are parties to a lawsuit against state and local officials seeking several remedies for the massacre.
Biden’s visit comes during a racial reckoning in the United States as the country’s white majority shrinks, threats increase from white supremacist groups and the country re-examines its treatment of African Americans.
Biden, a Democrat who won the presidency partly on the strength of Black voter support, made fighting racial inequality a key platform of his 2020 campaign and has done the same during his short tenure in the White House.
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