Trump says he will resume campaign rallies from June 19

WASHINGTON • United States President Donald Trump said he plans to resume his campaign rallies, beginning in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on next Friday, a setting and a date that have deep meaning for African Americans at a moment when the nation has been again forced to confront its long history of racial injustice.

The campaign had halted its rallies in March after Americans adopted social distancing practices to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

Mr Trump had said he would resume the rallies as soon as next week. On Wednesday, he ticked off locations for rallies in remarks to reporters during a meeting with black supporters and media figures at the White House. He later said the Tulsa rally would be followed by events in Florida, Arizona and North Carolina.

But his choice of when and where to resume the big, often raucous campaign gatherings is freighted with significance, particularly in the wake of the death of Mr George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police last month and the nationwide protests that have followed.

The rally will fall on "Juneteenth", a commemoration of the end of slavery. The date is not recognised as a federal holiday and is largely celebrated within the country's African American community.

And the location, Tulsa, is also fraught: The city is the site of one of the worst massacres of black people by whites in the US, the 1921 attack on the neighbourhood of Greenwood, once known as "Black Wall Street".

Ms Katrina Pierson, an adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement "that the party of Lincoln, Republicans are proud of the history of Juneteenth, which is the anniversary of the last reading of the Emancipation Proclamation".

Mr Trump, she added, "has built a record of success for black Americans".

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