An Oklahoma judge has dismissed a lawsuit seeking reparations for the 1921 tulsa race carnage, a dashing effort to secure some measure of legal justice by survivors of the deadly racist rampage.
Judge Caroline Wall dismissed the case with a caveat on Friday court case trying to force the city and others to pay compensation for the destruction of the once thriving black district known as Greenwood.
The order comes in a case of three survivors of the attack, all now over 100 years old and arraigned in 2020 in hopes of seeing what their lawyer called “justice in their lifetime.”
Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum said in a statement that the city has not yet received the full court order. “The City remains committed to locating the graves of victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, encouraging economic investment in the Greenwood District, informing future generations of the worst event in our community’s history, and build a city where everyone has equal opportunities for a great life,” he said.
A lawyer for the survivors – Lessie Benningfield Randle, Viola Fletcher and Hughes Van Ellis – did not say on Sunday whether they plan to appeal. But a group that supported the lawsuit suggested they will likely challenge Wall’s decision.
“Judge Wall has effectively sentenced the three living Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors to languish — truly to death — on the basis of Oklahoma’s appeal,” the group, Justice for Greenwood, said in a statement. “There is no semblance of justice or access to justice here.”
Wall, a Tulsa County District Court judge, wrote in a brief injunction that she dismissed the case based on arguments from the city, the regional chamber of commerce and other state and local government agencies. She had spoken out against the defendants’ motions to dismiss and allowed it case to continue last year.
Oklahoma local judicial elections are technically nonpartisan, but Wall has described himself as a “constitutional conservative” in previous campaign polls.
The lawsuit was filed under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, which states that the actions of the white mob that killed hundreds of black residents and destroyed the nation’s most affluent black business district still affect the city today.
It argued that Tulsa’s long history of racial division and tension stemmed from The massacre, in which an angry white mob descended on a 35-block area, looting, killing and burning. In addition to the dead, thousands more were left homeless and lived in a hastily built internment camp.
The city and insurance companies never compensated victims for their losses, and the carnage ultimately resulted in racial and economic inequalities that still persist, the lawsuit argued. Among other things, it sought detailed accounts of the property and wealth lost or stolen in the massacre, the construction of a hospital in north Tulsa, and the creation of a victim compensation fund.
A lawyer from the Chamber of Commerce said earlier that the massacre was terrible, but that the nuisance did not last.
Fletcher, who is 109 and the oldest living survivor, released a memoir last week about the life she lived in the shadow of the carnage. It will be widely available in August.
In 2019, the Oklahoma Attorney General used the public nuisance law to compel opioid manufacturer Johnson & Johnson pay the state $465 million in case of damage. Oklahoma Supreme Court overthrown that decision two years later.
Bleiberg reported from Dallas and Associated Press staff writer Michael Biesecker contributed coverage from Washington.