(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden headed to Tulsa on Tuesday to mark the 100th anniversary of a White mob’s destruction of the city’s once-thriving Black business district, where he’ll announce new efforts to address the nation’s racial wealth gap.
Biden will deliver remarks on the centennial of the Tulsa race massacre at about 4:15 p.m. New York time from the Greenwood Cultural Center, which commemorates a neighborhood that was once so prosperous it was known as “Black Wall Street.”
Biden has sought to make racial equity a centerpiece of his presidency and to combat systemic racism in U.S. society. His efforts contrast with Republican lawmakers in states, predominantly in the South, who have recently passed laws prohibiting schools from teaching that racism is embedded in U.S. culture, as well as new election laws that Democrats say would make it more difficult for Black and other minority voters to cast ballots.
During his trip, Biden will announce measures to increase the number of federal contracts awarded to small, disadvantaged businesses. The president will meet privately with surviving members of one of the worst incidences of racial violence in American history.
It’s unknown how many people were killed in the 1921 massacre, though estimates range as high as 300. The city of Tulsa said it would begin exhuming a suspected mass grave dating to the massacre.
For decades, the incident was little known outside Oklahoma. The massacre featured prominently in the plot of the Emmy-winning 2019 HBO series “Watchmen.”
Last week, Biden reiterated calls for Congress to overhaul U.S. policing as he met with the family of George Floyd, the unarmed Black man who was killed last year at the hands of a White Minneapolis police officer.
The federal contracting changes will help reduce U.S. wealth inequality, a White House official said, which has left White people more prosperous than people of color. The U.S. government is the largest consumer of goods, but only about 10% of federal agency dollars go to small, disadvantaged businesses, the official said.
The Historical Reasons Behind U.S. Racial Wealth Gap: QuickTake
The president also is set to announce new rules that target housing discrimination. Minorities lag behind White people in home ownership, a primary means of building and transferring wealth.
Biden also will instruct Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge to lead an interagency initiative to address inequity in home appraisals. Black-owned homes are routinely appraised at lower values than similar ones in White neighborhoods.
Biden and his administration have criticized Republican lawmakers who have recently pursued laws Democrats consider racist. They include measures by Republican-led legislatures in at least five states that would ban the teaching of so-called “critical race theory.” Republicans in states including Iowa, Georgia and Florida have meanwhile passed new election laws tightening access to the polls, spurred on by former President Donald Trump’s continued false claims that Biden stole the 2020 election. In Texas, Democrats blocked Republicans late Monday from passing a law to restrict early voting and ban ballot drop boxes, but the GOP has vowed to keep pushing for the law.
In remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre described the Republican voting-law efforts as “a concerted attack on our democracy” based on “the same repeatedly disproven lies that led to the assault on our nation’s capitol on January 6.”
She said the GOP changes would make it harder for people to vote, particularly those of color, by reducing opportunities to vote by mail or outside of normal business hours.
“This must stop,” she said. “We need to make it easier, not harder, for all eligible voters to register to vote and cast their ballots.”
Biden issued a proclamation on Monday commemorating the Tulsa massacre that blamed the federal government for impeding efforts to rebuild the Greenwood district.
“The destruction caused by the mob was followed by laws and policies that made recovery nearly impossible,” according to the proclamation. “In the aftermath of the attack, local ordinances were passed requiring new construction standards that were prohibitively expensive, meaning many Black families could not rebuild.”
It went on to say that the city’s Black residents, like many across the U.S., experienced redlining that prevented them from using homeownership to build wealth. The proclamation also discussed ways the federal highway system furthered segregation.
In Tulsa on Tuesday, Biden will also call for passage of his infrastructure proposal, saying it would provide a $10 billion fund that communities such as Greenwood could tap for revitalization, an official said. Another element of the plan would retrofit transportation infrastructure to reconnect neighborhoods divided by highways.
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