Credit: Instagram
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A Soho art gallery meant to represent racial equality and celebration of lives lost in the 1921 Tulsa massacre was found vandalized early Monday morning.
According to an Instagram post, the Black Wall Street Gallery was found vandalized Monday morning, where the name was smeared with white paint. According to the gallery, the police at first refused to call this a hate crime.
“We’ve called the police and they claimed that this isn’t hate speech despite the fact that this occurred on the centennial anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, said the post. “We’ve been operating in SoHo since October 10, 2020, and this never happened until now.”
“We are demanding that the police review their policies on what constitutes hate speech because this was indeed deliberate and intentional,” says the first post on Instagram. “All one has to do is look at the facts. We are Black Wall Street Gallery and this incident occurred exactly 100 years after the massacre.”
“And yet, the police did inform us that if a noose were hanging on our door, then they’d consider the incident hate speech. As far as we’re concerned, smearing white paint on the word “black” is deliberate and intentional and therefore constitutes hate speech. We’re pushing for this to be documented as such,” they added.
There were hit again the next night.
“We are asking for @nypd to take very seriously this matter because we still perceive it as a hate crime and this nonsense is only continuing, the second post said. “But so are we. We’re in the middle of a very important exhibition and we’d like to focus on saluting the ancestors who lost their lives in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. However, having to constantly deal with this level of ignorance is unbecoming.”
After the second attack, the New York Post reported that the incident has now been referred to the Hate Crime Task Force for investigation.
Despite the vandalism, the gallery is using it to bring more awareness.
“At the same time, we want to thank everyone who has reached out in solidarity and support given all the vandalism,” the gallery said. “We’ve decided to leave the first two acts of vandalism on the glass to remind the world that hate still exists in 2021, even in New York City.”
We’ve been pushing for healing, unity and love since we opened our doors in Tulsa back in September 2018, and we’ll continue doing so. 21 Piece Salute is the type of exhibition that helps to break barriers and expose others to black culture in a powerful way. And the different styles confirm we’re not a monolith,” they added.
