Stories of injustice were kept alive at an event during the Democratic National Convention last week.
A panel discussed the intersection of goals for victims of racial violence. The panel took place during the Democratic National Convention. The timing of the event made sense to President of the Emmett and Mamie Till Mobley Institute Christopher Benson.
“That’s how you affect change,” Benson said. “You affect change by informing people, by sharing the truth and hopefully by inspiring them to continue their work. Not only to elect candidates, but to elect candidates with a specific kind of agenda that’s designed to move us forward as a country.”
The similarities between the Emmett Till lynching and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre are obvious to Benson. Once Black people broke barriers, violence happened.
“There was a sense that black people had stepped out of their assigned place as subservient,” Benson said. “They were having great success and people in the larger community, white people, wanted to push that back.”
Chicagoan Emmet Till also threatened ideas of white supremacy.
Till was lynched after being accused of flirting with a white woman. Two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were acquitted of Till’s murder by an all-white jury. One year later they admitted to the lynching, but due to double jeopardy laws were never charged.
There can never truly be justice for Till, according to panelists, but there are still two survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Their attorney, Damario Solomon-Simmons, says a reckoning is still possible for 110-year-old Viola Fletcher and 109-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle.
“I’m committed to making sure that at least our last two survivors see some form of justice,” Justice for Greenwood’s Damario Solomon-Simmons said. “That’s why we’re calling on the Biden-Harris administration to do what they can in this very moment.”
Earlier this year the Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected reparations for the two remaining survivors of the massacre.
Video of the event is on the Black Star Network YouTube page.
