The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a “review and evaluation” of the 1921 Race Massacre.
That news Monday came to the delight of Justice for Greenwood team members, who had championed the fight for reparations on behalf of the last two living survivors, Viola Fletcher and Lessie Benningfield Randle.
At a press conference, Damario Solomon-Simmons, who represented the survivors through their failed civil case against Tulsa, was celebratory.
“It is about time,” he said. “It only took 103 years.”
Tulsa’s Greenwood District, known as Black Wall Street, was leveled when a white mob attacked, killing as many as 300 people.
Justice for Greenwood held their press conference before any official announcement from the DOJ had been released.
According to prepared remarks from Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, the inquiry was launched under the umbrella of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows the DOJ to investigate racially-motivated cold cases prior to 1979.
Clarke said the department will release the findings of the inquiry at the end of the year. It is unclear if the findings could lead to any further actions from the federal government.
Solomon-Simmons exclaimed that the DOJ evaluation was long overdue.
“For our federal government to have never, ever recognized this with an actual report is a travesty,” he said. “It was a conspiracy of silence that has gone on for decades.”
Randle and Fletcher, 109 and 110 respectively, filed suit against the City of Tulsa and other municipal entities in 2020. The case was dismissed in Tulsa County District Court and a subsequent appeal to the Oklahoma Supreme Court failed.
The City of Tulsa has conducted numerous searches for mass graves from the Massacre. In August, Mayor G.T. Bynum announced a commission alongside Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper, who represents Greenwood, to explore giving reparations to the survivors and descendants.
In her remarks, Clarke said that the DOJ will “not interfere” itself in Tulsa’s own “remedial steps.”
In a statement, Bynum thanked the department “for their willingness to assist in this important work.”
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Edited by Michael Marcotte.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
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