TULSA, Okla. The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a lawsuit from the last two survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dampening hopes among racial justice advocates that the government would compensate one of the worst single acts of violence against black people in US history.
The nine-member court upheld the decision made by a district court judge in Tulsa last yearruling that the plaintiff’s complaints, while legitimate, did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance law.
The lawsuit was an attempt to force the city of Tulsa and others to compensate for the destruction, by a white mob, of the once-thriving black district known as Greenwood. In 1921 – on May 31 and June 1 – white mobs, including some people quickly deputized by authorities, looted and burned down the district, known as Black Wall Street.
About 300 black Tulsans were killed and thousands of survivors were forced for a time into internment camps overseen by the National Guard. Burnt bricks and a fragment of a church basement are all that survive today in the more than 30-block historically black neighborhood.
The two survivors of the attack, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, both over 100, sued in 2020 with hopes of seeing what their lawyer called “justice in their lifetime.” A third plaintiff, Hughes Van EllisHe died last year at the age of 102.
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