He added that the nation cannot simply “bury pain and trauma forever”. “At some point, there will be a reckoning, an inflection point,” he said. His remarks followed his meeting with the three remaining known survivors of the massacre, which destroyed 35 blocks of a flourishing Black neighbourhood of Greenwood, marking one of the bloodiest episodes of racist violence in the US. Violet “Mother” Fletcher and Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis, two of three known living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, listen to Joe Biden speak on 1 June. (AFP via Getty Images) On 31 May, 1921, a white mob deputised by law enforcement and supported by city officials indiscriminately fired on Black residents, as airplanes dropped flaming turpentine-soaked rags and dynamite, after a Black teenager was accused of assaulting a white elevator operator.