By: Ryan Love
Protesters clashed with a local pastor outside Tulsa City Hall on Wednesday as the city prepared to approve a mask ordinance.
Video shows a crowd gathered outside the building to speak out against the mask mandate approved by the city council.
Rev. Robert Turner of Vernon AME Church said in a news release that the protesters verbally attacked him and two other men with racial slurs and demanded they remove their masks.
Turner says he has been coming to Tulsa City Hall every Wednesday afternoon for about two years to protest for repentance and reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
“Today, I felt emotions that were unlike anything I have ever known,” Turner says.
“My very presence was the catalyst for an onslaught of anger and hate from my fellow children of God”
Turner included a YouTube video of the scene in the news release which says a man seen shouting in his ear assaulted him with a bottle of water.
People can be seen on video pulling Turner’s arm, surrounding him and yelling.
“I now have a deeper sympathy for civil rights activists like Vivian Malone, James Meredith, The Little Rock Nine, and countless others,” Turner says.
“Today, people shouted ‘USA’ at us as though it was an attack – as though the United States was no place for Black men seeking justice.”
Turner is expected to press charges against the people accused of assaulting him.
