Top Oklahoma court will hear reparations claim from Tulsa Race Massacre survivors

Oklahoma’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of a lawsuit filed by the last three living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

The 2020 lawsuit filed by Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis Sr. and Lessie Benningfield Randle was dismissed by a lower court in July. But the state’s top court agreed to hear the appeal last week. Tulsa County sheriff, county commissioners and the Oklahoma Military Department have all been named as defendants in the suit.

Lawyers for the city argued that “simply being connected to a historical event does not provide a person with unlimited rights to seek compensation from any project in any way related to that historical event.”

But the plaintiffs, all older than 100, were seeking relief from damage inflicted during the massacre, which they called a “public nuisance,” and to “recover for unjust enrichment” others gained from the “exploitation of the massacre.”

"The survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre are heroes, and Oklahoma has had 102 years to do right by them," said attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons, who is representing the plaintiffs, in a statement to The Associated Press. 

"The state's efforts to gaslight the living survivors, whitewash history, and move the goal posts for everyone seeking justice in Oklahoma puts all of us in danger, and that is why we need the Oklahoma Supreme Court to apply the rule of law." 

Caroline Wall, a district court judge, granted the city’s request to dismiss the case with prejudice last month. 

Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General Kevin McClure wrote that the survivors’ “allegations are premised on conflicting historical facts from over 100 years ago” and that “they have failed to properly allege how the Oklahoma Military Department created (or continues to be responsible for) an ongoing ‘public nuisance.’”

But the plaintiffs cited events that were supported by a report commissioned by the city in 2001, according to Solomon-Simmons. The report highlighted that 1,500 homes and businesses were destroyed and never rebuilt. 

The massacre began May 30, 1921, when a Black man named Dick Rowland was in the elevator of the Drexel Building at Third and Main streets with Sarah Page, a white woman. It’s unclear what exactly happened, but stories began circulating that an incident occurred, and white residents began exaggerating the alleged incident with each retelling, according to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. 

Rowland was arrested the next day as an investigation ensued, and armed white and Black residents began sparring. The courthouse where Rowland was being held had to be barricaded to protect him from the angry white mob. But Black residents were greatly outnumbered, and as the white residents continued to fire shots, Black residents began retreating to the Greenwood District. 

A segregated neighborhood of Tulsa, Greenwood was known as Black Wall Street for its flourishing economy that the businesses, schools and entertainment created for Black residents.

But in the early hours of June 1, 1921, a white mob flooded the neighborhood's streets, looting and burning buildings. 

Martial law was declared, and the National Guard was sent into Tulsa. Although the national guardsmen helped extinguish fires, they also imprisoned all Black Tulsans. More than 6,000 people were held at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds — including some for eight days.

Though the violence lasted only 24 hours, 35 city blocks were decimated and more than 800 people were injured. Today, historians believe as many as 300 people died that night.

According to the lawsuit, Benningfield Randle said she still has flashbacks of dead bodies being piled on the street as her neighborhood burned.

But for many years, Tulsa officials tried to eliminate the massacre from the historical record, despite promises to rebuild the Black neighborhood, according to The New York Times. None of the survivors or their families ever received any compensation from state or city officials.

The plaintiffs have asked the Supreme Court to give them the “opportunity — before they die and there are no other survivors of the Massacre — take the stand, take an oath, and tell an Oklahoma court what has happened to them, their families and their community.”

It’s not clear when proceedings before the state’s highest court will happen, but Solomon-Simmons told CNN that he and his clients are “ecstatic” over the court’s decision to hear the appeal. 

“If this truly is a nation of laws and a state based on the law, then my clients, the last known survivors of the massacre … should be able to go to court and have a court of law determine what occurred,” Solomon-Simmons said.