Juneteenth: Trump changes Tulsa Oklahoma rally date ‘out of respect’

(FASTNEWS | COLOMBO) – US President Donald Trump is postponing his first post-coronavirus lockdown election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma so it does not fall on a holiday commemorating the end of US slavery.

He tweeted that the 19 June rally would be held a day later out of respect for the occasion, known as Juneteenth.

The choice of date had drawn criticism amid nationwide anti-racism protests.

The location was also controversial, as Tulsa saw one of the worst massacres of black people in US history in 1921.

Up to 300 people died when a white mob attacked the prosperous black neighbourhood of Greenwood, known as the “Black Wall Street”, with guns and explosives. About 1,000 businesses and homes were also destroyed.

Why is Juneteenth significant?

Juneteenth is not a federal holiday, but is widely celebrated by African Americans.

It celebrates the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to enslaved African Americans in Texas.

Texas was the last state of the Confederacy – the slaveholding southern states that seceded, triggering the Civil War – to receive the proclamation, on 19 June 1865, months after the end of the war.