A reporter said the Trump campaign was aware it had scheduled a rally on Juneteenth in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where one of the deadliest race riots took place nearly a century ago.
Jonathan Lemire, a White House reporter for the Associated Press, said Monday on MSNBC that the campaign only delayed the event because the backlash exceeded expectations.
“Just to be clear: Campaign officials very much knew that it was Juneteenth when they selected that date,” Lemire explained on Morning Joe. “They expected some blowback. They were caught off guard by the intensity of it. The president eventually bowed to pressure and moved it from the 19th to the 20th, to a Saturday.”
Before moving the date of the event, Trump faced criticism from Democrats, including 2020 presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day or Black Independence Day, is recognized as a holiday in 47 states and the District of Columbia. The date marks the anniversary of the day in 1865 when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger announced the end of the Civil War and slavery.
Decades later, in 1921, one of the deadliest race massacres in the United States took place in Tulsa. The district known as “Black Wall Street,” home to hundreds of black-owned businesses, was destroyed during the riots.
