Stacey Abrams will deliver the keynote address at an event later this month marking the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre, organizers announced on Wednesday.
The 1921 Race Massacre Centennial Commission said Abrams, a 2018 gubernatorial candidate in Georgia who has garnered national attention for her work on voting rights, will speak on May 31 Remember & Rise commemoration event.
Phil Armstrong, the commission’s project director, told The Associated Press that Abrams’s work to help Georgia turn blue in the 2020 presidential election “inspired the entire country to re-envision what inclusive structures, systems and communities should look like.”
Singer-songwriter John Legend is set to headline the Memorial Day weekend event, which commemorates the day in 1921 when white residents of Tulsa, Okla., massacred Black residents and burned Black-owned businesses.
History Channel documentary “Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre” is set to premiere that weekend as well. Washington Wizards guard Russell Westbrook is an executive producer on the project.