Global Courant
A lawsuit for reparations and reconstruction to address the historic damage done by the 1921 Tulsa Race massacre has been dismissed.
The case, filed on behalf of the last three survivors of the attack by a white mob that killed an estimated 300 Black Americans in a community often referred to as “the Black Wall Street” of the time, was dismissed Friday by an Oklahoma judge, according to his record.
Judge Caroline Wall said in her decision she agreed with defendants, parties including the state and the city of Tulsa, who moved multiple times to dismiss. Wall dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled in state court.
The plaintiffs, Lessie Benningfield Randle, Viola Fletcher and Hughes Van Ellis, can still appeal.
Lawyers for them and for the defendants, as well as a non-profit organization involved in the case, did not immediately respond for comment.
Philanthropist Ed Mitzen, who gave the trio $1 million last year along with his wife Lisa, expressed disappointment at the layoff, calling it an “incredibly sad development”.
“Our hearts are with the survivors and their families,” Mitzen said in an email.
Among the defendants’ arguments is that the three plaintiffs suffered no individual ill-effects from the massacre, which has emerged as an example of government-sanctioned racism and violence that contributed to unequal outcomes for black Americans.
The carnage most likely started as a misunderstanding or a lie. A black boy got into an elevator with a white girl in Tulsa, and after they emerged, the local paper suggested he had attempted to sexually assault her, a claim never endorsed by the girl.
Historians have speculated that the boy may have tripped and bumped into the girl, given the strict standards and high price for contacts beyond the boundaries of the race at the time.
The newspaper’s editorial page called for a lynching, and the next day whites in the city were on the march and rioting, setting fire to 1,200 homes, 60 businesses, a hospital, a school and a library in the Greenwood District, according to Human Rights Watch.
The riots gutted the heart of the black community, which would never recover to the lofty days before May 31, 1921.
The lawsuit called it one of the country’s “worst acts of domestic terrorism”. It argued that plaintiffs such as Lessie E. Benningfield Randle, at 108 the oldest survivor of the event, suffered personal losses.
In Randle’s case, her grandmother’s house was ransacked and destroyed. One of the keys to the discrepancy between white and black wealth is the intergenerational ownership of real estate, with many properties destroyed or stolen outright after the Civil War.
In the case of Tulsa, attorneys in the civil filing argued, “This vicious, inhumane attack … robbed thousands of African Americans of their right to self-determination upon which they had built this self-sustaining community.”
The plaintiffs have argued that the city, county and state caused public nuisance, or at least watched as it happened, and then used it to enrich their respective governments. The lawsuit includes apologies from the city’s mayor and from an Oklahoma National Guard commander, the latter of whom admitted troops did nothing to save the community.
The defendants claim that there is no evidence that the three plaintiffs suffered “individual harm”. “Tragically, many people lost their businesses, their homes and even their lives in the carnage,” they said in December.
The plaintiffs have not attached a dollar amount to the lawsuit. They have said they want the defendants to rebuild some community elements, such as a hospital, and contribute to a survival fund.
Resigning is unlikely to halt the growing awareness of their story, a pivotal piece of American history that helps explain today’s inequalities.
Mitzen said he appreciated plaintiffs’ role in the story.
“We wanted to meet them, shake their hands, tell them we’re sorry about what happened and let them know their struggle matters,” he said. “And when it was time for them to leave this Earth, we wanted them to know that their families would be a little better off today than they were yesterday.”
