AP Reports Tulsa Massacre, Omits 102 Years of US Racial Policy
AP commemorates the life of Viola Ford Fletcher, who at 111, sought justice for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. They describe a 'white mob' decimating 'Black Wall Street' after a sensationalized newspaper report. What AP fails to connect are the direct, unbroken lines between federal policies that enabled the massacre—like the systemic denial of land, wealth, and legal protection to Black
communities—and the ongoing structural inequities that echo Jim Crow's violence. The media frames it as a historical relic, an 'unfortunate' past, rather than the raw, exposed nerve of contemporary American policy. How many more survivors must pass before we recognize that the mechanisms of racialized violence, while perhaps less overt than bombs dropped from planes, continue to operate with
bureaucratic efficiency?