Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Trump Tulsa election rally slammed
Campaign set for June 19 end of slavery commemoration at site of race massacre
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump defended his decision to resume election campaign rallies next week on a day marking the end of US slavery and at the site of a black massacre 100 years ago, saying it would be a celebration.
The Republican president drew criticism for scheduling the rally on June 19, known as Juneteenth, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where white mobs attacked black citizens and businesses in one of the country’s bloodiest outbreaks of racist violence in 1921.
The rally will take place amid a backdrop of protests against racism after the death of George Floyd, 46, at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. Trump has been criticised for trying to militarise the US response to the protests.
“Think about it as a celebration,” Trump told Fox News in an interview broadcast yesterday, in which he then boasted about the size of his campaign rallies. He denied the Juneteenth date for the rally was on purpose.
The Fox interviewer, an African-American, later said she was not sure if he was aware of the painful history of Tulsa to black Americans because her questions in the interview, which took place on Thursday, focused on the Juneteenth aspect of the visit. The day commemorates the end of slavery in the US in 1865 and is celebrated as African-Americans’ Independence Day.
“This isn’t just a wink to white supremacists – he’s throwing them a welcome home party,” Senator Kamala Harris, tweeted on Thursday.
On Thursday, the Republican Party scheduled Trump’s speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination in Jacksonville on August 27. That day will mark the 60th anniversary of what is called “Ax Handle Saturday”, when a white mob wielding ax handles began a riot over black youth attempting to order food from a whites-only lunch counter in the Florida city.
Black community and political leaders are calling on Trump to at least change the date of an Oklahoma rally.
“To choose the date, to come to Tulsa, is totally disrespectful and a slap in the face to even happen,” said Sherry Gamble Smith, president of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce, an organisation named after the prosperous black community that white Oklahomans burned down in the 1921 attack. At a minimum, she said, the campaign should “change it to Saturday the 20th, if they’re going to have it.” |