The last three survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre will have their day in the Oklahoma Supreme Court, after it agreed to hear the appeal of their reparations case following its dismissal by a lower court last month, The Messenger reported.
Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis Sr. and Lessie Benningfield Randle, who are all older than 100, sued Tulsa in 2020 for reparations over the destruction of Greenwood, a once-prosperous Black neighborhood in the city.
The city’s lawyers 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.”
The plaintiffs said they were seeking relief from damage inflicted during the massacre 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," their attorney, Damario Solomon-Simmons, said 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."
According to The Hill, the Tulsa County sheriff, county commissioners and the Oklahoma Military Department have all been named as defendants in the suit.
The catalyst for the massacre occurred May 30, 1921, when a Black man named Dick Rowland shared an elevator in the Drexel Building with a white woman named Sarah Page. It’s unclear what exactly happened, but gossip began to circulate that an incident occurred, according to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum.
A mob of white residents descended on Greenwood in the early hours of June 1, 1921, looting and burning buildings, and martial law was declared. Though the National Guard helped extinguish fires when it was sent into Tulsa, it also imprisoned all Black residents. More than 6,000 people were detained at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for eight days.
Thirty-five city blocks were decimated and more than 800 people were injured in violence that lasted for only 24 hours. Historians today believe that as many as 300 people died in the carnage.
The lawsuit alleges that Tulsa’s long history of racial division is a product of the massacre.