President Joe Biden delivered remarks from Tulsa, Oklahoma, on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre on Tuesday, making him the first U.S. president to participate in the remembrance of one of the darkest days in America’s racist history.
“For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness,” Biden said, speaking from Tulsa’s Greenwood Cultural Center. “But just because history is silent, it doesn’t mean that it did not take place. And while darkness can hide much, it erases nothing.”
“My fellow Americans, this was not a riot; this was a massacre,” he added, rejecting the “race riot” narrative long used to describe the events.
