Over 100 years ago, one of the deadliest race riots in American history destroyed the prosperous neighborhood of Greenwood, in Tulsa, Okla. With the most recent lawsuit seeking reparations for victims now dismissed, will those victims ever obtain the justice they seek?
Who are they? The Tulsa race massacre killed as many as 300 Black people in the once prosperous Black community of Greenwood, Okla., and left more than 10,000 homeless.
- Once known as "Black Wall Street," Greenwood was a prominent Black business district that was destroyed in the two-day terrorist attack in 1921.
- The living victims who are seeking reparations for the massacre include Lessie Benningfield Randle, Viola Fletcher, and Hughes Van Ellis, all over 100 years old. Fletcher, the oldest of the group, is 109 years old.
- The lawsuit was first brought to the city of Tulsa in 2020, in pursuit of what the lead attorney called "justice in their lifetime."
What's the big deal? Just this past week, Oklahoma judge Caroline Wall dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice. This decision comes over one year after she had allowed the case to proceed and ruled against the defendants' motions to dismiss.
- According to reporting from the Associated Press, the lawsuit was brought under Oklahoma's public nuisance law, claiming that the lives lost and the damages suffered from the white supremacist attack continued to impact the city in the present day.
- The lawsuit also sought a detailed accounting of the property and wealth that was destroyed in the massacre, the construction of a hospital in North Tulsa and a victim compensation fund, per the AP.
- Wall tossed the case out on the basis of arguments made by the city, and by state authorities.
- An argument from the defendants also claims the plaintiffs did not suffer "individualized injury" from the attack.
