SURVIVORS REMEMBER TULSA MASSACRE A CENTURY AGO

Lessie Benningfield Randle, 106, can still remember a house engulfed in flames and bodies stacked in truckbeds - horrors that 100 years later led to a pledge by President Joe Biden to work for racial justice, Makini Brice reported for Reuters.

"I was quite a little kid but I remember running and the soldiers were coming in," Randle said in an interview with Reuters as her hometown of Tulsa prepared to mark one of the darkest chapters in its history.

Monday was the centenary of a massacre targeting Tulsa's prosperous African-American community in the district of Greenwood that bore the nickname Black Wall Street.

After a Black man was accused of assaulting a white woman, an allegation that was never proven, white rioters gunned down Blacks, looted homes, and set fire to buildings block by block.

More than 1,000 buildings were destroyed. An estimated 300 people were killed, thousands were left homeless and an entire community that had been seen as a symbol of what Black Americans could achieve was devastated.

”This was the Mecca. Tulsa (was) considerably what Atlanta is today," said Duke Durant, 30, a comedian, actor and Tulsa native, referring to one of the US cities noted for its large, thriving Black community.

Biden declared Monday a day of remembrance, calling on Americans to "commit together to eradicate systemic racism and help to rebuild communities and lives that have been destroyed by it."

He acknowledged the federal government's role in "stripping wealth and opportunity from Black communities." Among the ways, Biden said he would address racial inequity was "ensuring that infrastructure projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice and promote affordable access."

Events related to the massacre commemoration began ahead of the anniversary.

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