There are only three survivors left, and the United States has covered up 100 years of tragic events | the Holocaust | the United States

In the decades following the Tulsa Massacre, American society remained silent collectively.

"Racial discrimination" is like a fig leaf in American society, and since the founding of the United States, social events triggered by this matter have been common.

Recently, three survivors of the Tarsa genocide, who are over a hundred years old, have once again suffered a disappointing and unjust fate. A judge in Oklahoma, USA, rejected their claim lawsuit.

The elderly sued in 2020 under Oklahoma's public interest infringement laws, demanding a detailed audit of property damage caused by the massacre; Build a new hospital in the northern part of Tarsa city; Establish the "Tulsa Genocide Victims Compensation Fund".

The lawyers of the elderly stated that they will appeal this case and will not give up until justice is restored. The organization supporting the lawsuit, Greenwood Justice, said in a statement that the judge ignored the pain suffered by the three survivors and said, "There is no justice here, and there is no way to seek justice."

The Tulsa Genocide is one of the bloody acts of racial violence in American history, but it is rarely mentioned in American history books. At that time, a group of white people who supported racial discrimination rushed into a black gathering area in Tulsa, burning down thousands of houses. The area was flattened overnight, causing hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries. The Tulsa Massacre is also known as the "most serious genocide in American history.".

Another Wall Street

"Everyone is born equal" was a slogan proposed by American founders, but when the Constitution was enacted in 1787, the system of slavery was retained, deliberately ignoring the equal rights of black people.

This institutional arrangement is both contradictory and contradictory to the concept of equality in human life as stated in the declaration, laying the foundation for future racial conflicts.

During the Civil War, the then President of the United States, Lincoln, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which legally abolished slavery. Black people were granted nominal freedom, but were trapped in a state of "segregation but equality".

Under the policy of racial segregation, "white people are white, black people are black." White people do not go to places where black people eat, where black people live, and where black people work. Even public places such as bank counters and public restrooms separate white people from black people.

Moreover, in contrast, the rights of black people are always lower than those of white people. For example, black people can only enter through the back door of the theater, and the same water dispenser is never useful for black people.

In such an environment, a wealthy district composed of black businesses emerged in the city of Tulsa in the United States.

Tarsa City is located in the state of Oklahoma, which was originally inhabited by Native Americans and was founded in 1907. Later, multiple oil fields in the area were gradually developed, and by 1919, Oklahoma's oil production had accounted for one-fifth of the total production in the United States.

Oil has boosted many people's wallets, and Tulsa has become the second largest city in Oklahoma, even boasting skyscrapers taller than Oklahoma City.

·At that time, the city of Tarsa was bustling with prosperity.

Some visionary black people saw business opportunities and came from afar to quickly accumulate wealth through oil extraction and related industries during the urban development boom.

Many black entrepreneurs have made a fortune in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, not only building buildings and doing business, but also giving back to the community by building facilities such as hospitals, schools, churches, employment agencies, and so on. Quickly, Greenwood became a bustling black commercial district known as "Black Wall Street.".

Here, black people dress decently, are polite and positive, and even some wealthy black people have private planes. They often dress elegantly in formal attire, eat steak and drink red wine, and even have pianos that are rare in white families. Some people hire white immigrants from Europe as drivers, servants, and gardeners in their homes.

·John Williams runs a candy shop locally and usually drives out.

Historian Hannibal Johnson, who lived in Tulsa, wrote many books about Greenwood, including Black Wall Street. He said, "People believe that Greenwood is a safe haven in the southern hinterland of the United States to escape economic, social, and political oppression. It is precisely because of the existence of discrimination against black people and the lack of voice among black people in the white dominated economy that the economy here is so prosperous, which is a natural result."

Kill a white thug with red eyes

In Greenwood, black people do not face any discrimination due to their skin color, and they are free to enter and exit public places in Greenwood. But to the white residents living in other neighborhoods of Tulsa, Greenwood's prosperity was a hindrance to their eyes.

·Old photos of the city of Tarsa.

The black people there are "unworthy" of wealth and the right to enjoy life, and some white owned newspapers describe Greenwood's bars as "the source of sin, immorality, and racial mixing.".

Gradually, the white people's mockery of black people turned into jealousy. In addition, the trend of racial skepticism in the United States is becoming increasingly intense at this time, and members of the notorious white supremacist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, are everywhere.

In the surrounding areas of Tarsa, there are thousands of active members of the Ku Klux Klan. White people seem to be looking for an opportunity to find fault, and at this point, a chance event becomes an excuse for them to take action.

On May 30, 1921, an African American shoeshine boy named Roland entered a building, used a restroom exclusively for people of color, and was about to take the elevator downstairs. However, he accidentally stumbled while entering the elevator and hit the white girl's elevator operator's foot when he fell, causing the girl to scream.

After the elevator arrived on the first floor, the girl shouted to others that she had been attacked by black people. People who didn't know why believed Roland had violated the white girl and arrested her.

The next day, Roland's incident was wildly reported by the media. Although the white girl changed her accusations after calming down and believed that Roland might have accidentally bumped into her due to a fall, some local media deliberately concealed this detail in the article.

The Tulsa Tribune published an article titled "Black Ghost Arrested for Attacking a Girl in an Elevator" with a prominent headline, and added many fictional details to the article, aiming to inspire hatred among white readers.

The article aroused the anger of local white people, and the newspaper was sold out. Soon, a group of white thugs gathered near Roland's prison where he was being held. Due to rumors circulating in the prison that Roland may be lynched, a group of armed personnel are preparing to go to the prison to protect Roland.

According to eyewitnesses, in the midst of the chaos, a black person and a white person engaged in a fight, and it is unknown who fired a shot. Subsequently, the riot erupted completely.

·An African American male died in the riot.

At around 2 o'clock in the morning on June 1st, nearly a hundred cars filled with white thugs drove towards Greenwood. The people in the cars fired wildly at black homes, and the black servants who were temporarily staying at their employers in the white area were also kicked out of the houses.

According to an affidavit in the Washington Post, the mob "attacked every black person they saw". Soon after, the mob started arson everywhere. Two hours later, the fire destroyed dozens of black houses and shops, and many blacks who had no time to escape were burned alive.

However, the thugs still refused to leave, dragging the black man's body behind the car and driving through the city center of Tulsa.

After dawn, the white man flew six more planes and dropped flammable and explosive materials such as fuel bottles at Greenwood, continuing to attack the remaining area with fierce firepower.

According to later official statistics, over 35 black neighborhoods in Greenwood were destroyed, resulting in the deaths of over 50 white and over 200 black residents, and property damage approaching $2 million.

·The thick smoke billowed in Tarsa.

A hundred years have passed, and Fletcher still cannot forget the rows of houses being burned, the flames illuminating the sky, and the scattered corpses on the ground.

She said, "I will never forget the atrocities committed by white thugs when we fled. I can still smell smoke and see flames, I can still see African American shops burned down, I can still hear planes flying overhead, and I can still hear screams..."

Shortly after the riot, dozens of surviving black people filed lawsuits in court. However, a grand jury composed entirely of white people submitted 99 charges, and even more absurdly, the jury shifted the blame onto black people, with 57 defendants being black.

In the end, this formalistic farce ended with a black man being imprisoned for 30 days on charges of carrying weapons, while the participating white thugs did not receive any punishment.

Most black people choose to leave this sad place. Fletcher said that after the family left Tulsa, she also lost the opportunity to receive education. "I spent most of my life working as a servant for white families. Until today, I can hardly afford the daily expenses of life."

A small number of black people who stayed behind attempted to rebuild their homes, but due to the encouragement of racists by the Tulsa government, they passed a bill prohibiting black people from rebuilding in Greenwood. Thousands of black people who had lost their property were forced to spend the winters of 1921 and 1922 in tents.

·People are trying to find their belongings in the ruins.

Don't let history become the past

Unfortunately, in the decades following the Tulsa Massacre, American society remained silent collectively.

It was not until the late 1960s that Don Ross, an African American politician and journalist born in Tulsa, published articles related to the Holocaust in the newspaper he founded that this matter gained attention. Later, Ross entered the Oklahoma State Legislature and established a committee to investigate the events of that year.

At first, the committee found some old photos of the ruins of the Greenwood community, ironically stating that those photos were not meant to document the horror of the event, but to show off white supremacism.

·A mess after the big fire.

In 2001, the committee released a detailed description of many neighborhoods in Greenwood District that were damaged that year and demanded compensation for survivors and their families, but was refused by the Oklahoma State Legislature and federal court on the grounds that the crime had expired.

In 2011, the committee released a report on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Talsa Massacre.

The New York Times found that awareness of the Holocaust was increasing in the city of Tulsa and even within the United States: about two-thirds of Tulsa citizens said they were more or less aware of the "Tulsa racial unrest." Shortly thereafter, Tulsa opened a "Reconciliation Park" with a monument to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.

However, the government still refuses to investigate or compensate for this matter, let alone include it in historical records. Meanwhile, the survivors of the massacre gradually aged and passed away, leaving only those testimonies behind.

·The three survivors are all centenarians.

In 2019, the American drama "The Watchman" aired, with the protagonist being a descendant of the victims of the Holocaust. "The Watchman" recreated the Talsa Massacre and once again drew attention to this historical event in American society.

Shortly thereafter, the mayor of Tulsa announced the resumption of an investigation into the massacre, which included excavation work in the city's neighborhoods to locate and identify victims. In February 2020, the Oklahoma Department of Education announced that it would include the Tulsa massacre in its "history" curriculum.

As Fletcher said, "I recall the history of this massacre every day. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot.".