President Donald Trump and his campaign are under fire after announcing the restarting date and location of MAGA rallies: June 19 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The Trump campaign was aware of the significance of Juneteenth, and expected “some blowback,” but thought few would notice.
June 19 is Juneteenth, the day that Americans, especially Black Americans, celebrate to commemorate the end of slavery.
This month marks the 99th anniversary of the “single worst incident of racial violence in American history,” where dozens if not hundreds of Black Americans were massacred by white people, and where 35 square city blocks, known as “Black Wall Street” were burned to the ground by whites. That happened nearly a century ago, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The Trump campaign “was caught off guard by the intensity,” of the blowback, the AP reports, “particularly when some linked the selection to the 1921 massacre.”
It’s unclear why the campaign was caught off guard, given the nation is in the middle of what are now three weeks of nationwide protests about racial injustice and police brutality, spurred by the killing of a Black man who was unarmed and handcuffed, at the hands of a white police officer, while others looked on and did nothing to save him.
“This isn’t just a wink to white supremacists — he’s throwing them a welcome home party,” said Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), commenting on the date and location choices for the restarting of Trump’s MAGA rallies.
The anger many Americans are feeling over the choice of Tulsa on Juneteenth is now compounded by the next campaign date and location choice. President Trump will officially accept the GOP nomination in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 27, a horrific anniversary in American history.
“The president will address his supporters on the 60th anniversary of ‘Ax Handle Saturday,’ when a white mob organized by the Ku Klux Klan attacked mostly black civil rights protesters sitting at the city’s whites-only lunch counters,” in Jacksonville, The New York Times reported.