OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit against the last two survivors of the 1921 Tulsa massacre, dampening hopes among racial justice advocates that the government would make amends for any of the crimes. worst acts of violence against black people in American history.
The nine-member court upheld the decision of a Tulsa District Court judge last yearholding that the plaintiff’s grievances, while legitimate, did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.
“We further find that plaintiff’s allegations do not sufficiently support a claim for unjust enrichment,” the court wrote in its decision.
Messages left Wednesday with a spokesperson for the city of Tulsa and the survivors’ attorney, Damario Solomon-Simmons, were not immediately returned.
The lawsuit was an attempt to force the city of Tulsa and others to provide compensation for a white mob’s destruction of the once-thriving black district known as Greenwood. In 1921 – on May 31 and June 1 – the white mob, including some people hastily appointed by the authorities, looted and burned the neighborhood, which was called Black Wall Street.
As many as 300 Black Tulsans were killed, and thousands of survivors were for a time forced into internment camps overseen by the National Guard. Burnt bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that remain of the thirty-block historic Black neighborhood today.
The two survivors of the attack, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, who are both now over 100 years old, filed a lawsuit in 2020 in hopes of seeing what their lawyer called “justice in their lives.” A third claimant, Hughes Van Ellisdied last year at the age of 102.
The lawsuit was filed under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, arguing that the white mob’s actions continue to impact the city today. It alleged that Tulsa’s long history of racial division and tension stemmed from the massacre.
The city and insurance companies never compensated the victims for their losses, and the massacre ultimately resulted in racial and economic disparities that persist today, the lawsuit argued. It requested a detailed accounting of, among other things, the property and wealth lost or stolen during the massacre, the construction of a hospital in north Tulsa and the creation of a compensation fund for victims.
