History shows the Tulsa massacre wasn’t an isolated event. These were some of the others

As talk of reparations crop up across the country, CNN’s John Avlon talks with historian Geoff Ward about the number of Black communities wiped out by mob attacks and how a young Senator Abraham Lincoln had warned the nation against disguising mob violence as political expression over a century and a half ago. Watch the latest episode of “History Refocused.”

#CNN #News #historyrefocused

66 comments

    1. @Gerald talk about things people said >>> *_”I don’t want my kids growing up in a Racial Jungle”_* said Joe Biden on signing his Segregationists Bill targeting Black Children integrating with White Students. But don’t take my word for it… read this NBC article >>> *_”Joe Biden Didn’t Just Compromise With Segregationists. He Fought For Their Cause In Schools, Experts Say.”_*

    2. @Robert Johnson Except Byrd changed his ways and ended up being a great champion for POC. So much so that the NAACP honored him when he died.

      Yes Biden advocated for stuff that historically looks dubious.

      He also was Vice President to America’s first black president. Obama stated forthrightly that his greatest decision as President was to pick Joe. He has outside of those few things advocated for black people and as President has had very attractive policies. It’s one of the reasons over 90% of black people voted for him.

      You don’t really think those things your stating… Without context buy the way… Are not known, do you?

    3. @Robert Johnson No Trump has a racist history that’s well documented. And we got to witness it while he was in office. We saw the KKK endorse him. When David Duke ensured him and Trump was asked to disavow the endorsement, he pretended he didn’t know who David Duke was. Even though he had been on record years earlier talking about him.

      How about the White nationalist rally where Richard Spencer had a huge convention Center screaming Heil Trump. Yeah…

      Biden has some questionable things in his past that he has owned up to and apologized for…

      Trump is the White nationalists darling… And he’s a cult leader that people put over God and Country… That alone makes him way more concerning for anybody that believed in democracy.

    4. @Robert Johnson Who is Trump now. Who is Biden now. Trump is the darling of the KKK. Trump was endorsed by Richard Spencer and David Duke. I loved how Trump didn’t want to disavow Duke’s endorsement so he pretended not to know him. Trump always courts the White nationalists.

      It makes sense he became a Republican who implemented racist strategies in the 60s when they desperately courted the White southern vote.

      Here’s the infamous Lee Atwater interview, where he digs into the disgusting and racist underpinnings of the Republican party.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8E3ENrKrQ

  1. Thank you for sharing these tragic events! I’m an Asian American here in Georgia, and racism affected our community as well. Our grandparents immigrated to the US as “Paper Sons” during the Chinese Exclusion Act, and my adopted family last name still bares the unfortunate mark of the era! As a child of the 1960’s and as an adult now, I’ve witnessed first hand the racism directed at me personally. From what I see, it will take generations for the scourge of racism to work its way out of our society!

    1. @Mark Lasky you seem to be hung up on the fact that people voted for Biden and didn’t vote for the moron you voted for. That upsets you deeply hurts you. You people have a sickness about yourselves.

    2. @Mark Lasky you’re right, the Democratic Party back then did carry the Confederate flag, but they have moved to the Republican Party since Carter. That’s why I’m a Conservative Independent and will not support ANY candidate who caters to those racist people, especially Traitor Trump!

    3. @Mark Lasky you embarrass yourself , Mark. in a series of tweets Duke wrote that” Trump and Tucker is the only way to stop commie Bolsheviks!” “ it’s the only path to beat them” “#TrumpTucker2020” Why would he tweet that if he voted for Biden? You really do suck at lying

  2. This stuff is only new to cnn and the rest of white Americans. My Grandmothers who actually lived through this stuff and are still alive today. Has been teaching me this history my entire life, I’m 34 now. It’s very frustrating, and honestly this isn’t even half of what was going on back then.

    1. @HiSomebody TrackingMuch? Why would a I vote Democrat? They only care about the black vote not black people. And if your community would’ve listened, we been telling you all how America was and still is in some places.

      They didn’t even mention the concentration camps in Natchez, MS for runaway and rebellions black slaves.

    2. @Slique Vic so you wind into white neighborhoods, into elementary schools and such, and spoke about black history in the black experience? Cause I can tell you no one like that ever came to my school. I’m very grateful for the Internet because I have now been able to learn things that are outside of my personal community.

    3. @Slique Vic so you think that Val Demings, Barack Obama, John Lewis, Barbara boxer, Kamala Harris, etc. only care about the black vote and not about Black people? Considering that poverty is disproportionately high in communities of color, and that Democrats disproportionately fight to eliminate poverty, I don’t understand why you would vote for anyone else

    4. @HiSomebody TrackingMuch? John Lewis cared. But if you know his life story and what he’s been through, how could he not care. All those other names you threw out, absolutely not. They only care about the Black vote.
      I’m glad the internet is teaching you, but I learned black history from my family, so my knowledge isn’t white washed. I’ll never vote Democrat again, and I have my reasons. I’d post them but I’m sure youtube won’t allow that😄. I’m just a tax paying citizen that don’t vote for now on.

  3. Thanks for sharing this history to us. It is true, I did not learn about any of this in school (highschool). Even though history is old, it seems like there always something new about history to learn from, which at times is the case.

  4. We are an abusive spouse swearing we will do better while refusing to remember what we did wrong in the first place.

    1. America is a narcissist. We gaslight non white people and tell them that what they know to be true isn’t. We claim to be the best but our grades and ways shows different.

  5. The saddest part is the horrors themselves of course.
    But I often think of the generational wealth and prosperity that was stolen from black Americans. Businesses, property, education, health, and yes power. All because others feared and hated them.
    It’s a debt that can never be repayed. And little wonder some want it all erased.

    1. @Marian Lincoln nobody forgot about that. And Native Americans were force to go to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears.

    2. @Marian Lincoln who are they? Me? You? My friends? What exactly do you think you want here? To tax me more for something I’m not even apart of? To tax my family for something no one even knows about because we may look like people that did something wrong in the past? What is the end game for you people when you talk about the past CONSTANTLY?

    3. @Name Here you want to take the money of young whites and give it to young blacks by government force.. why don’t you people just skip this virtue stuff and get straight to your intentions?

  6. So much for pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Even when black people tried to do that, it was met with jealousy, anger and hate. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

    1. Considering the original meaning of “pulling yourself by your bootstraps” it is actually quite fitting. Basically, it means to do the impossible. What people of color have done in the face of adversity is both incredibly amazing and heartbreaking. I say heartbreaking because they had to go through such horrors, and still face the reverberations today. We need to get our heads out of the sand and work toward a better future.

    2. Great point! Sometimes, hard work isn’t enough if you have people actively trying to oppress your progress or even destroy everything you’ve built.

  7. Thank you. I helped research the Ocoee Massacre as a founder of the Democracy Forum. I prefer the term “massacre” to “race riot” because those of us who grew up in the second half of the twentieth century “race riot” has come to mean the exact opposite of what we are trying to describe. In terms of Ocoee, Florida the Census records support the idea that it was an “ethnic cleansing”. Some of the property was sold, but given that houses were being burned, it was literally fire sale prices. One of the reasons for documenting the events is to provide a retort to the rhetorical question, “Why didn’t freed African-Americans” prosper in a generation or two like imigrants to the United States?” The answer seems to be freed African-Americans did prosper, but once they prospered their voting rights and property was taken away. The Ocoee Massacre (and ethic cleansing) happened on election day 1920 and was directly related to voting and not accusations of rape.

    1. Well said. “Massacre”, or “mass lynching” are more accurate. Thank you for your work. Knowledge is strength

    2. There is an enormous amount of violence against African Americans in the turn of the century in Florida, and little of it ever taught!

  8. wish I knew more of US history back then. I was wondering why old people hate my brown color. I could have been more understanding and forgave them right there and then when they were calling me names. I hope this circle of color blindness will stop and for everyone to accept the fact that those old man were jealous of successful colored person.

  9. It’s messed up how Lincoln’s speech mentions politically motivated violent acts becoming “legitimate political discourse” because just recently some politician said this very thing about what happened on Jan 6 was just that. Legitimate political discourse.

  10. As a public school educator in 6th-12th grade for 21years, everyone should know that our kids do not get enough history or geography! They are clueless about WWI forward; even AP kids are clueless about the connections between economics and society.
    It’s very sad that college is the first time student get history; but violence against citizens of any country is most often repressed—it’s not uncommon no matter how wrong that is.

    1. I’m a 70 yr old history buff and even I didn’t know — until I read the about the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic — that a number of historians believe that the Germans lost the war due the massive toll the Spanish Flu was taking on their troops. Both sides experienced it but the Allies got a new load of fresh bodies when the USA finally joined the war, whereas the Axis didn’t.

      I got into that by reading about Sares virus a few years ago and started reading up on virus and macrophages. Which lead me to the 1918 Spanish Flu book

      All of that started to make me thing about how viruses & bacterial sicknesses had massive influence on humans How the Black Death of the mid 1300s wiped out 1/3 of all of Europeans and how that effects government, economics, religion , culture etc and long term impacts on knowledge spreading etc.

      All of which made me absolutely dumbfounded to see how this Covid-19 pandemic by we Americans

    2. @ninja potato Your view is that history being taught automatically involves blaming children for that history? I think it just might be possible for people to learn from history without conceding to your inane strawman argument.

    3. @renideo yes . because one thing they always do is make everything about that history. your culture your exciting and every thing is only and only based on slavery and racism. which is again like I said everyone has done it back then . not only this but if you have anything to say about it and they don’t like it then you are as evil as the people in the history. and also they use that history as political tool to justify stupid things. like let’s cancel cops because they were slave hunters or let’s not celebrate Columbus because he is racist. and again this is not about history that’s my point. You people keep lying about it and try to make political decisions into a history so you justify grooming those kids

    4. they go and say CRT is history. And just like that you can’t criticize it because then , you are a racist who deny what happened to black people. and then they like we need to teach history, history is CRT and BLM. So we need to teach this to kids. if you as parents don’t like it you are a racist. If you as kid object to it then they are racist. BTW this not the first time that woke democrats do this .another example is transgenders. they say that they have a big suicide rate there for if you criticize them. Then you make them feel sad and then they could kill themselves. There for if you criticize them then you are an active murderer who is trying to kill them .

  11. I lived in Tulsa from the mid 70’s to the mid 80’s and the only evidence of the Greenwood massacre was a small plaque on one of the original buildings. Tulsa has since built a monument and reconciliation park to document this tragic event. THIS is the type of history many narrow minded white people are AFRAID to have their children learn in school. These parents aren’t doing their children any favors and we will NEVER break the cycle of racism and hate until we come to grips with our TRUE history instead of some whitewashed version.

  12. We need a lot more shows like this. I was horrified at 35 years old to learn of this from a friend I worked with. I went home and researched it on the computer. It got much worse from there. Anyone complaining about woke culture is either a closet racist or grossly ignorant.

    1. @Mark Lasky Yeah, the guy who said “Labor is prior to,and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed, LABOR IS THE SUPERIOR OF CAPITAL, and deserves much the higher privilege.” was totally out of line with Marxist thought. Dude was surrounded by Forty-Eighters (German socialists, many of them personal acquaintances of Marx) and was personal friends with Marx’s US publisher at the time, Horace Greeley.

      I will admit that “pen pals” was a bit of an overstatement, but the two men did correspond, if briefly, and Lincoln was both familiar with and influenced by not only Marx’s writings in the New York Daily Tribune, but by socialist and egalitarian thought, in general … which are values the current GOP tends to view with disdain, to say the least.

      All you conservatives do is fight progress tooth and nail, more often than not murderously (MLK, Lincoln), then try to take credit for the changes in society you feared so much when they turn out to not be so bad, and then claim as your own the very martyrs your regressive ideologies put into the ground for the purposes of hollow virtue signalling. No matter what you call yourselves, what your party affiliation, your attitudes betray you.

    2. @Spooky Hokum So Lincoln thought that you should get paid for working?? Wow, Hey genius? A Democrat racist murdered MLK you’re a Democrat, right? The only thing to possibly fear in a society are totalitarian godless leftists.

  13. Current events suggest that racism and discrimination in America is as prevalent as ever and is baked into all of the major institutions such as Justice and Banking.

  14. Thanks for taking the time and putting effort into teaching this history. Right wing media would claim that it is racist to teach about racism in this country, they want us to forget the injustice of the past so we can be blind to current issues. There is no moving forward as a country without knowing who we are.

  15. I was born in 1951, I lived through McCarthyism, race riots in the sixties and Vietnam War. And here we are again. I thought we handled this. I am still learning about our history. This will never end until our country is held accountable.. What we did to our black soldiers in WWI is unforgivable. Our native Americans and during WWII Asian Americans while their son were fighting in the war. It will not change until we do.

  16. Thank you John for presenting a much NEEDED program about another part of America’s truth. So sad but much be exposed. Thank you again for your effort.

  17. My ancestor made the mistake of putting his money in a bank in Rayle, GA in the early 20th century. He went to withdraw some money . He was told to leave his bank book and return the next day. He did and the account had a zero balance. The family was chased out of GA. My ancestor owned 125 acres in GA and started life over in WV. He was in his ’70s.

    1. I am so sorry. It deeply hurts me to hear these stories. My father and mother have told me countless stories. Most high bless.

    2. That story is important and unforgettable. These things never ever occur to me, either what a crooked banker did or having to be sophisticated when dealing with one. Heartbreaking. Thank you for your post.

  18. I recently started reading the 1619 Project, on the history of slavery and it’s aftermath.

    I have to say this is really one of the best and well written histories I have ever read. Well documented, and explained.

    It’s Truly a shame & a disgrace that this book has been banned in so many schools. This act really says nothing good about the people behind keeping this from being studied by American students.

    And for those who condemn this book without having read it —- WTF is the matter with you ? Your lack of curiosity and truth finding is a danger to yourself and your community and country.

  19. I remember finally learning about this history. I was shocked that I hadn’t been taught earlier. Entire towns wiped out, with NO repercussions to the mobs of murderers.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.