An Oklahoma judge has dismissed a lawsuit seeking reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, led by survivors of the horrific 1921 attack on the Greenwood district, dubbed “Black Wall Street.”
The lawsuit was by the last three known survivors, Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108, Viola Fletcher, 109, and her brother, Hughes Van Ellis, 102.
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs and their representation claimed that the survivors were never compensated for what they lost in the event, with the loss now totaling $200 million in today’s currency, and that the massacre contributed to the disparities that the Black community in Tulsa faces today. The lawsuit also claimed that government officials neglected the Black community in Tulsa to favor the white parts of the city and prevented the community from rebuilding itself.
The determined survivors have vowed to appeal the decision.
“We were forced to plead this case beyond what is required under Oklahoma standards, which is certainly a familiar circumstance when Black Americans ask the American legal system to work for them. And now, Judge Wall has condemned us to languish on Oklahoma’s appellate docket,” a statement reads by Damario Solomon-Simmons, attorney for Benningfield Randle, Fletcher and Ellis.
“But we will not go quietly. We will continue to fight until our last breaths. Like so many Black Americans, we carry the weight of intergenerational racial trauma day in and day out,” the statement added. “The dismissal of this case is just one more example of how America’s – and specifically Tulsa’s – legacy of racial harm, racial distress is disproportionally and unjustly borne by Black communities. We will not rest until there’s justice for Greenwood.”
The Associated Press notes that a Chamber of Commerce attorney previously said the massacre was “horrible, but the nuisance it caused was not ongoing.”
