NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- An art gallery in SoHo that commemorates the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre was vandalized on the centennial of the first day of the massacre, its proprietors said.
A vandal or vandals smeared white paint on the lettered facade of the Black Wall Street Gallery on Mercer Street overnight Sunday into Monday, the gallery wrote on Instagram.
Monday was the 100th anniversary of the first day of the Tulsa Race Massacre, during which a white mob destroyed a prosperous Black neighborhood in Tulsa's Greenwood District, burning down buildings and killing as many as 300 residents.
"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," the gallery said. "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," the gallery added. "All one has to do is look at the facts."
The NYPD on Tuesday confirmed it is investigating the incident as an act of vandalism. The department's Hate Crimes Task Force was notified about the incident, it said.
