Oklahoma Supreme Court Dismisses Tulsa Massacre Lawsuit
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A historic quest for justice by the last two known survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre ended with a state court ruling on Wednesday.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of their lawsuit, the final legal stop for Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, and Viola Ford Fletcher, 110.
The women, who were small children at the time, argued that the destruction of what was then known as Black Wall Street and the massacre of up to 300 African Americans by a white mob amounted to an ongoing public nuisance, and they sought reparations.
The ruling concludes the lawsuit that Ms. Randle and Ms. Fletcher filed in 2020. Last year, another survivor of the massacre, Hughes Van Ellis, the younger brother of Ms. Fletcher, died at 102.
“The continuing blight alleged within the Greenwood community born out of the Massacre implicates generational-societal inequities that can only be resolved by policymakers — not the courts,” the ruling states.
In the early part of the 20th century, the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa was a cultural and economic success story that came to be known as Black Wall Street. On May 31, 1921, a white mob gathered outside a county courthouse in Tulsa where a young Black man was being held over allegations that he had assaulted a young white woman.
White men deputized by the civil officials assaulted the neighborhood from the ground and the sky. Within two days, Greenwood was no more : 35 city blocks were reduced to heaping ashes, up to 300 of its citizens were dead and thousands were left homeless. The attack erased generational wealth that had been built at a time of great racial oppression.
No person or entity was ever held responsible, and no survivors were compensated for their losses.
The lawsuit , filed under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, contended that the massacre’s impact continues to be felt acutely more than a century later. Damario Solomon-Simmons, the lead lawyer for the survivors, said the city’s enduring racial disparities, economic inequalities, and trauma among survivors and their descendants are evidence of the massacre’s long reach.
State and local officials have argued that while the massacre was horrific, they should not be held accountable for events that happened in 1921.
The lawsuit named the Tulsa County sheriff, county commissioners and the Oklahoma Military Department, which administers the Oklahoma Army and Air National Guard as defendants.
Judge Caroline Wall, a district court judge, who had ruled in May 2022 that the case could proceed , dismissed it in July 2023 on procedural grounds. Lawyers for the city argued that “simply being connected to a historical event does not provide a person with unlimited rights to seek compensation from any project in any way related to that historical event.”
The following month, the Oklahoma Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the lower court’s dismissal. On April 2, Mr. Solomon-Simmons stood before the nine justices and asked that the case be allowed to proceed. Ms. Fletcher and Ms. Randle attended the proceeding.
“On the one side, you have 109-year-old plaintiffs who are the last two survivors of the massacre,” he said. “On the other side, you have the perpetrators of the massacre who for 103 years have escaped any liability and who deny to this day that they caused the destruction which these survivors witnessed with their own eyes.”
In a joint statement issued before the April 2 hearing, Ms. Randle and Ms. Fletcher said, “We are grateful that their now-weary bodies have held on long enough to witness an America, and an Oklahoma , that provides race massacre survivors with the opportunity to access the legal system.”
“Many have come before us who have knocked and banged on the courthouse doors, only to be turned around.”
In an interview with The New York Times before her legal team filed one of its final court motions last year, Ms. Randle said justice was overdue.
“I would like to see justice," she said from her Tulsa residence in November. “It’s past time. I would like to see this all cleared up and we go down the right road. But I do not know if I will ever see that.”
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The ruling:
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A whole lot of folks are playing pass the burro. "The Law is an ass", Mr. Bumble (Oliver Twist), and those who write them are donkey's asses.
I'm pretty sure there's a 2 year statute of limitations on killing minorities in that conservative xtian goober state... /s
Of the 9 judges 4 are dem and 5 are repub ... although these days everyone is their opposite. There was only one dissenter and that was in part.
I tagged my comment as sarcasm...
Food for thought:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
– George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man.
Oklahoma Civil Statute of Limitations Laws - FindLaw
Oklahoma Civil Statute of Limitations: At a Glance
In most instances, Oklahoma plaintiffs have a two-year limit from the date of the incident in which to file a lawsuit. Exceptions include defamation (libel or slander) at one year, five years for rent and debt collection or written contracts, and three years for judgments and oral contracts.
The main provisions of Oklahoma's civil statute of limitations are listed in the table below. See FindLaw's Injury Law Basics section for more information about filing a lawsuit.
Injury to Person
Defamation (Libel/Slander)
Fraud
Injury to Personal Property
Professional Malpractice
Trespass
Collection of Rents
Contracts
Collection of Debt on Account
Judgments
I don't see murder listed, unless murder of non-whites is still considered a property crime in that xtian goober shit hole...
As most people are aware, there is no statute of limitations on the crime of homicide, this is a civil suit if you take the time to read the article.
Then why didn't you list it?
To be filed under excusing the innocent for crimes of long ago.
Long ago the person (s) that killed 300 human beings because of their color, destroyed their homes and businesses and took their future were not charged, nor were anyone for the next 100 years and the massacre was pretty much kept a secret. So if you whitewash a crime as hideous as the Tulsa Race Massacre the courts and their supporters can claim innocence much like Pontius Pilate.
At this same time the ''Murders of the Flower Moon'' were taking place down the road, known as the ''Reign of Terror'' dozens of Osage Indians were killed for their head rights to their oil, most of the murders remain unsolved with the exception of Hale who was sentenced to life to be pardoned in 20 or so years.
Those white folks in Oklahoma sure were jealous of any minority that was successful, but our courts have granted absolution for the crimes then and now.
There is no whitewash. It is all part of history. There is, however, total innocence for everyone alive today.
Sorry Kavika, those are the facts.
The facts are 300 killed homes and business destroyed along with generations of wealth and culture and humanity.
Those are the facts, Vic.
To the guilty by not prosecuting them, a cloud of cowardice hangs over the tragic event.
To believe that the whites didn't profit from this is pure foolishness, which would mean that generations of whites profited from the massacre.
Since no whites were arrested nor tried for this crime absolution came in that form.
It matters nothing to some. They were the wrong color.
They would not even let the residences rebuild there. History is a 'mother.' I have read some of the accounts of what happened to some of the victims of this massacre-it is 'unspeakable.' But, to this day, the shameless prevail at being so-through their children. The accounts may not be a matter for any court today. . .but when you read them they have the ring of truth.
How deplorable
A whitewash is exactly what it is.
Deplorable.
Reading about the "head rights" and the schemes used to take BACK land given to Native Americans by hook and crook. One such scheme involved white spouses going so far as a slowly poisoning their Native American spouses (and their offspring) in order to takeover control of ownership of oil rich properties owned by NAs. Whites. . .that murdered their own interracial children for ill-gotten theft of land.
I never assigned any beliefs to you, making that accusation is a BS tactic when you have no response.
As stated they provided absolution by no arrests, trials or convictions. Simple as that.
You are really stretching with that nonsense. The comments were about the Tulsa riots and the aftermath so the whites who would have profited and the generations after were those involved in the killings and destruction. Are you claiming that your ancestors were part of the murderous clan that destroyed ''Black Wall Street''?
The white officials of the time in Oklahoma, I have read, even went so far as to (scheme) hatch and execute a "formula" to claw-back land given to Native Americans in agreements . . .based on the scheme 'tinkering' around the edges of the land used by NAs and 'left-over' land was given to White settlers (on Indian land). Thereabouts .
Excerpt:
Well, under the cover of law and with as many lies as they needed to tell and convince themselves of their right to do it, the supremacists in Tulsa did it and got away with it. It is a prime reason that many blacks and other minorities still to this day do not put all their trust in some whites. The deception ('forked tongue') treatment of minorities by certain groups of whites is an old 'sore' though scabbed over yet is 'tender' and guarded.
It is a prime reason that many blacks and other minorities still to this day do not put all their trust in some whites.
My friends grandfather, while on his lunch break as a painter, was murdered by a black gang during the race riot of 1919. Should he mistrust blacks? Should his descendants? How many generations must pass before his family can trust black people?
How the hell you fix your hand to write about somebody's grandfather - sad and anecdotal (we all have our 'run-ins' with individual wrongs) as it is, has nothing to do with city/state sanctioned wrongs committed against a class of people.
For that matter, I mistrust some black people starting with Clarence Thomas, continuing with my pissed off attitude to this day with the 'brother' who many years ago slept with me and then threatened to turn me in to the military (I was in the service at the time) unless I paid him. (I did not, but to this day I do not forgive him for trying). We all have our personal accounts, but do not confuse the personal with the public, official, and capitol.
That has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
Makes no difference anyway
you are the one who claimed this incident from a century ago causes some minorities not to trust whites, not the government.
Let me put it this way. . . blacks/minorities have been told and can read about the wrongs done by supremacists in our pasts. . . and it lays a foundation of warning signs and flashing lights all its own for times (such as we are in now) when we read recent articles, see the SCOTUS opining about 'originalism,' and have presidents running on slogans: 'Make American Great Again" while sending out black conservative surrogates speaking aspirationally, and implying blacks were a 'more cohesive family unit' when Jim Crow was the order of the day.
More and the story continues to tell itself on Smithsonian Mag (see the link above)!
Silence has fallen on this place 'suddenly.' Wonder why. /s