Tulsa Race Massacre survivors to fight Oklahoma Supreme Court’s dismissal of lawsuit for reparations, lawyers say

Attorneys for the last remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa massacre said they still plan to fight for a reparations lawsuit that the Oklahoma Supreme Court recently rejected.

The state’s highest court upheld a district court’s decision to throw out a lawsuit that Viola Fletcher, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Hughes Van Ellis filed in 2020, urging the city of Tulsa and other defendants to reinstate one of the most devastating acts of mass violence in the US against black Americans.

On May 31 and June 1, 1921, a white mob destroyed the once-thriving black community of Greenwood—killing an estimated 300 people in the process—over a false and overblown allegation that a black man had sexually assaulted a white woman. The event marked the first time in American history that bombs were dropped on US soil.

The destruction of the community not only killed hundreds but also left more than 10,000 people homeless, according to the Red Cross.

Fletcher, Randle and Ellis were children at the time of the massacre. Ellis died last year at age 102, leaving Fletcher and Randle, both 110 and 109, respectively, as the last living plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

In their lawsuit, the survivors argued that victims and descendants of those affected by the massacre deserve compensation and cited public law to argue that the deadly riots fostered racial divisions that still exist in Tulsa today. They also argued that the city never gave anything back to the community it called Black Wall Street, despite profiting from its marketing and tourism.

Last year, a district court judge dismissed the lawsuit after ruling that the city “simply connected to a historical event does not give a person unlimited rights to seek damages.”

The plaintiffs appealed to the state Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s decision to throw out the lawsuit. In the 8-1 decision, the justices noted that “the law does not permit us to expand the scope of the public nuisance doctrine beyond what the Legislature has authorized to provide plaintiffs with the justice they seek.”

The ruling effectively ends the plaintiffs’ legal battle. However, Fletcher and Randle’s legal team said they plan to file a petition for rehearing with the Oklahoma Supreme Court to reconsider their decision.

Their attorneys argue that the destruction of Greenwood “clearly meets the definition of a public nuisance under Oklahoma law” and disputed the notion that Fletcher and Randle are asking members of the state’s highest court to “decide a ‘political’ question” in their review of the suit .

“This is not a political matter simply because the lawsuit seeks to redress wrongs committed by a white mob against black people — the court system is the very place where such wrongs must be redressed,” the attorneys’ statement to the Atlanta Black Star. read.

The lawyers also asked the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the massacre under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Act of 2007. That law, introduced by the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis, passed in 2008 and established offices within the DOJ. and the FBI to investigate and prosecute racially motivated crimes that occurred in or before 1980.

“The faithful application of the law compels the conclusion that Mother Randle and Mother Fletcher made a plea for help. They have a right to a trial… In the 103 years since the massacre, no court has held a trial to address the massacre and no person or entity has been held accountable for it,” the lawyers said.