(June 1, 2011 at 3:54 pm)Shell B Wrote: Ninety years ago today, a black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma was burned to the ground by a mob of angry white people. Homes were looted and somewhere between 50 and 300 black people were murdered. Just in the last few decades, the unmarked graves of some of the victims have been uncovered. It was the worst race riot in United States history. It all started because a black man accidentally stepped on the foot of a white woman in an elevator (well, that is one version of the story). She screamed and he was arrested. The townspeople tried to remove him from the courthouse and lynch him. The papers sensationalized the event, said he was trying to rape her and incited the city to violence. He was later found innocent and freed, but the damage was done. Sometimes I marvel at how much things have changed and yet, have stayed the same.
http://www.tulsareparations.org/TulsaRiot.htm
Absolutely. Every time we deny a group of their rights, we end up giving it to them just to find another group. Bigotry seems to be an innate human trait. I couldn't explain why. Americans alone have persecuted by race, religion, gender, and nationality. It's a damn shame that in the modern world we still have so many goddamn bigots.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Dean
Dean