New York’s Black Wall Street Gallery vandalized multiple times

A New York City gallery meant to memorialize the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre was vandalized three times this week.

Owners of the Black Wall Street Gallery, which is located in Soho, said that the gallery’s logo was smeared with white paint on Monday, which was also the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

“We are demanding that the police review their policies on what constitutes hate speech, because this was indeed deliberate and intentional. 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,” the gallery wrote in a Facebook post.

The gallery was targeted two more times throughout the week, with vandals placing initials on the gallery window on Monday night and on Wednesday writing a message in black marker reading “ETC REAL ART,” according to the New York Post.

Jeffrey Maddrey, the chief of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) community affairs bureau, said on Thursday that the department was looking to investigate the incidents as hate crimes, NBC News reported.

“I know hate when I see it,” Maddrey said. “And what happened here was all of that.”

The NYPD released video footage of the Monday incident on Friday, asking for local residents to share any information they may have on the suspect.

May 31, 2021 at 05:02 am, an unknown suspect smeared white paint on the window of the Black Wall Street Gallery, at 26 Mercer St. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). Tips can also be submitted at https://t.co/KCXmxiACfC, or @NYPDTips pic.twitter.com/3S0Oe42HBl

— NYPD 1st Precinct (@NYPD1Pct) June 4, 2021

President Biden declared Monday a “Day of Remembrance: 100 Years After The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre” to commemorate the horrific racist attack, in which a white mob killed hundreds of Black Americans in Tulsa, Okla., and burned down several blocks of what was referred to as Black Wall Street.

“We honor the legacy of the Greenwood community, and of Black Wall Street, by reaffirming our commitment to advance racial justice through the whole of our government, and working to root out systemic racism from our laws, our policies, and our hearts,” he said at time.