Late Monday, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced it plans to launch the first-ever federal investigation into the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, in which hundreds of Black Tulsans were killed, thousands were displaced and forced into internment camps overseen by the national guard, and Greenwood, the thriving district once known as “Black Wall Street”, was decimated, looted and burned by a racist mob.
The review, launched by the civil rights division’s Cold Case Unit, comes after a major setback for survivors and descendants of the massacre. In June, Oklahoma’s supreme court dismissed a lawsuit brought by two survivors, Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, and Viola Fletcher, 110. In July, the women once again called for Joe Biden and the justice department to intervene.
Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general who announced the DoJ review, called the Tulsa race massacre “one of the deadliest episodes of mass racial violence in this nation’s history.”
“We honor the legacy of the Tulsa race massacre survivors, Emmett Till, the Act that bears his name, this country and the truth by conducting our own review and evaluation of the massacre,” Clarke said, announcing that the review should be finalized by the end of the year. “We thus are examining available documents, witness accounts, scholarly and historical research and other information on the massacre. When we have finished our federal review, we will issue a report analyzing the massacre in light of both modern and then-existing civil rights law.”
In a statement back in June, Fletcher and Randle said: “We are deeply saddened that we may not live long enough to see the state of Oklahoma or the United States of America honestly confront and right the wrongs of one of the darkest days in American history. At 109 and 110 years old, we are elderly and we know that we are living on borrowed time … Oklahoma and the United States of America have failed its Black citizens. This failure is profound, systemic and marred by lip service and clever platitudes.”
Clarke said that there was “no expectation” there is anyone still living who may be prosecuted as a result of the inquiry. Regardless, for descendants and survivors who have not been compensated for the massacre and its ongoing consequences, the inquiry’s announcement was still worth celebrating.
“It is about time,” Damario Solomon-Simmons, the lead attorney for the Tulsa race massacre survivors, said during a press conference. “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.”