The aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre, during which mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1921. | Source: Bettmann / Getty
A federal civil rights review of one of the worst instances of violence motivated by anti-Black racism in U.S. history is being greeted by cautious optimism more than 100 years after the “act of racial terrorism” took place.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday announced it intended to launch a formal review of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 when white supremacists destroyed a thriving Black business district and killed hundreds of people in the Oklahoma city.
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The review will be largely symbolic since, as Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said , there is “no expectation” that it could yield any criminal prosecutions.
“We acknowledge descendants of the survivors, and the victims continue to bear the trauma of this act of racial terrorism,” Clarke said on Monday.