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Churches and School Targeted in Tulsa Race Massacre Get $21,000 From Nonprofit
The nonprofit Justice for Greenwood donated $21,000 in funds to churches and a school that were targeted in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, a terrorist act carried out by white supremacists.
Justice for Greenwood gave 13 churches and Booker T. Washington High School each $1,500. The churches and school were damaged if not outright destroyed by the mob of white supremacist attackers 103 years ago. Booker T. Washington High was the only school to stay standing following the attack, according to The Black Wall Street Times. The school was also a shelter for refugees of the Tulsa Race Massacre, according to KTUL-TV.
“These Churches and Booker T. were the heart and soul of Greenwood,” Justice for Greenwood founder Damario Solomon-Simmons said in a statement. “They have served as the spiritual and cultural bedrock of Black Wall Street before, during, and after the Massacre. Honoring these churches and Booker T. today reflects our commitment to preserving their legacy and supporting their vital work as we continue to fight for justice for the massacre survivors, descendants and the broader Greenwood community.”
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The 13 churches to receive the funds were: Morning Star Baptist Church, Metropolitan Baptist Church, Greater Union Baptist Church, Paradise Baptist Church, Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Vernon A.M.E. Church, Wesley Chapel, First Baptist Church North Tulsa, Bethel Seventh Day Adventist, First Church of God in Christ, Christ Temple C.M.E., Church of the Living God Temple 53 and Progressive Baptist Church.
This is not the first donation from Justice for Greenwood. Since 2021, the churches and school have received over $40,000. In addition, the last three survivors, Hughes Vann Ellis, Viola Fletcher and Lessie Benningfield Randle, were given $300,000 in May 2021. Ellis passed away last year.
The Tulsa Race Massacre has been in the news lately, especially thanks to groups like Justice for Greenwood pushing to keep history from being forgotten. This October, the Department of Justice announced a new inquiry into what happened in 1921, according to KOSU-FM. The DOJ’s inquiry is part of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Claim Act, passed in 2008.
“For our federal government to have never, ever recognized this with an actual report is a travesty,” Solomon-Simmons told KOSU about the inquiry. “It was a conspiracy of silence that has gone on for decades.”
The Tulsa Race Massacre took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921 in the Greenwood District, an affluent Black neighborhood also known as Black Wall Street. The real cause was the resentment from white residents seeing Black people do well financially, but officially, the inciting indecent was when a Black man, Dick Rowland, was accused of assaulting a white woman, Sarah Page.
Though what exactly happened is unknown—some suggest that Rowland tripped while entering the elevator Page operated and touched her arm—even contemporary reports make it clear no assault happened. Page even confirmed to police that he had grabbed her arm, but nothing more; Page declined to press charges.
But on the next day, May 31, police detained and jailed Rowland. It was reported in the white-owned Tulsa Tribune, bringing attention to the case. White residents of Tulsa formed a lynch mob at the Tulsa County Courthouse. Black residents came out armed to protect Rowland. Though some of the white people went home at this point, many went to get their own weapons.
On the early morning of June 1, around 1 a.m., white people started lighting fires in the Greenwood District. Later that morning, some white residents had flown planes over the neighborhood, firing guns and dropping firebombs. It’s believed that many of these flights featured law enforcement personnel.
There were many casualties, but even today the exact number is unknown. Though there are 39 confirmed dead—the majority of whom are Black—it’s believed as many as 300 people were killed, and over 800 people were injured.
A 2001 report from the Oklahoma state legislature said that Tulsa officials conspired with the mob. The report encouraged the state to set up a reparations program for survivors and their families.
The legislature, however, declined to include reparations in a 2001 reconciliation act, which instead created a memorial park, promised economic development in the Greenwood District, and offered over 300 college scholarships for descendants of victims of the massacre.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
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