‘It Is About Time’: DOJ’s Civil Rights Review Of Tulsa Race Massacre Is Called Long Overdue

The aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre, during which mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1921. | Source: Bettmann / Getty

A federal civil rights review of one of the worst instances of violence motivated by anti-Black racism in U.S. history is being greeted by cautious optimism more than 100 years after the “act of racial terrorism” took place.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday announced it intended to launch a formal review of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 when white supremacists destroyed a thriving Black business district and killed hundreds of people in the Oklahoma city.

MORE: The Tulsa Race Massacre And Making The Case For Reparations

The review will be largely symbolic since, as Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said, there is “no expectation” that it could yield any criminal prosecutions.

“We acknowledge descendants of the survivors, and the victims continue to bear the trauma of this act of racial terrorism,” Clarke said on Monday.

The civil rights review may not even validate ongoing efforts at securing reparations for victims’ descendants.

However, it is the first federal civil rights review of its kind, something that was hailed by Damario Solomon-Simmons, the lawyer who filed a lawsuit on behalf of remaining survivors. Solomon-Simmons also suggested the action taken by the federal government was long overdue.

“It is about time,” Solomon-Simmons told reporters following the DOJ’s announcement of the civil rights review. “It only took 103 years, but this is a joyous occasion, a momentous day, an amazing opportunity for us to make sure that what happened here in Tulsa is understood for what it was — the largest crime scene in the history of this country.”

The DOJ’s decision to launch the civil rights review came nearly two months after officials in Tulsa created a reparations commission that will seek how to repair harm to residents living in the city’s thriving Black district, Greenwood, during the 1921 massacre.

The panel, which has been named the Beyond Apology Commission, coined by Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, will review the Beyond Apology city report published in 2023 and a 2001 state commission report created by state Rep. Don Ross and the late Senator Maxine Horner. Both reports called for financial compensation for the victims of the attack. However, the 2023 report went further, advocating for not just financial restitution but also community and economic development, including housing, land grants, and healthcare programs for those affected by the tragedy.

“We acknowledge that no process, study, or report can fully collect, detail or assess the past events or present impacts of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and its over 100-year aftermath,” the Beyond Apology report stated on its website at the time. “Furthermore, we acknowledge that without direct action on ‘findings’ from any of the many processes, studies and reports around these events, there cannot be justice. Therefore, ‘Beyond Apology’ (the process) and report endeavors to serve another brick-layer in the foundation laid and re-laid by the many attorneys, historians, researchers, activists and legislators [past and present] who have and continue to work towards justice.”

The Beyond Apology Committee will assess these recommendations and will also focus on creating a housing equity program for massacre survivors, their descendants, and other north Tulsa residents. The huge development follows the recent dismissal by the Oklahoma Supreme Court of a lawsuit filed by Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, the last surviving witnesses of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, who sought reparations for the tragedy.

As reported by PBS, the court upheld a district judge’s decision from the previous year, ruling that while the plaintiffs’ claims were valid, they did not fit within the state’s public nuisance statute.

“We further hold that the plaintiff’s allegations do not sufficiently support a claim for unjust enrichment,” judges wrote of their decision at the time.

Randle and Fletcher, both over 100 years old, initiated the lawsuit in 2020 in hopes of achieving “justice in their lifetime,” according to their attorney. A third plaintiff, Hughes Van Ellis, passed away in 2023 at the age of 102.

What was the Tulsa Race Massacre?

On the dreadful day of May 31, 1921, white assailants looted, torched and burned down hundreds of Black-owned homes and businesses in Greenwood. Sadly, around 300 people died during the egregious attack.

Mobs of angry, racist white people descended on the Greenwood section of Tulsa and strategically targeted Black people along with businesses and residences they built and worked and lived in that were part of Black Wall Street, as the area had come to be known for its historic financial success and overall prestige. Historians believe that Greenwood was likely the wealthiest Black community in the country at a time when that type of financial success was disproportionately restricted to white people.

The violence included deadly shootings and arson to 35 blocks of buildings, leaving bodies strewn in the streets and structures smoldering after being burned down to the ground.

The Tulsa Race Massacre also reportedly came about following a white woman claiming she was raped by a Black man — an accusation that sparked the days-long white supremacist-led death and destruction that finally ended on June 2, 1921.

The end result has been more than 10 decades of the residual effects of the domestic terrorism that robbed generations of Black Tulsans of the type of accumulated wealth enjoyed by so many white Americans, including those who now own businesses and homes where Black Wall Street once stood.

The Brookings Institute estimated that the monetary damage done — and effectively lost — during the Tulsa Race Massacre is worth about $27 million in the present day. But a 2018 study found that the destruction caused losses that are closer to $200 million.

This is America.

SEE ALSO:

Reparations Lawsuit Filed By Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors Dismissed By Oklahoma Supreme Court

Beyond The Tulsa Race Riots: Inside The Plan To Rebuild City’s Black Affluence

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