The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it will launch a review of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, more than a century after one of the worst acts of racist violence in American history.
The federal Civil Rights Division’s Cold Case Unit is conducting the review of the massacre, according to ABC News. The violence took place in Tulsa, Okla., on May 31 and June 1, 1921 when a White mob descended on the city’s thriving Greenwood business district, known as “Black Wall Street,” burning and destroying more than 1,000 homes and businesses and killing upwards of 300 Black people.
An official number of killings has never been released because bodies were disposed of in mass graves, many of which went uncovered for nearly a century. After more efforts to search for victims were eventually launched in 2020, investigators found more than 120 previously unknown gravesites and began using DNA and forensic evidence to identify victims, The Associated Press previously reported.
A group of National Guard Troops, carrying rifles with bayonets attached, escort unarmed African American men to the detention center at Convention Hall, after the Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1921.
Oklahoma Historical Society/Getty
News of a federal review into the massacre comes after the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit in June that would’ve paid the two survivors of the domestic terror attack reparations, according to the AP.
Viola Fletcher, 110, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, are the two known survivors who are still alive and filed the lawsuit through their attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons.
“It is about time,” Solomon-Simmons said about the news of a federal review Tuesday, according to the AP. “It only took 103 years, but this is a joyous occasion, a momentous day, an amazing opportunity for us to make sure that what happened here in Tulsa is understood for what it was — the largest crime scene in the history of this country.”
Solomon-Simmons said “this community would never stop fighting for reparations” and that “this community would never forget what happened to our people, just for being Black, just for being successful,” according to ABC News.
“So we are excited today,” the attorney added. “This has been a difficult journey, a lot of obstacles, a lot of odds, a lot of opposition, but today we have a victory.”
Part of Greenwood District burned in Race Riots, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, June 1921.
Universal HIstory Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty
The federal government is able to open the cold case investigation as a result of the 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows the DOJ and the FBI to investigate and prosecute “criminal civil rights statutes violations that occurred before 1980 and resulted in a death.”
Fletcher was 7 years old when the massacre took place but once testified in Congress that she’ll “never forget” what happened.
“I still see Black men being shot and Black bodies lying in the street,” Fletcher told lawmakers during the 2001 Race Riot Commission. “I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre every day. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not. And other survivors do not, and our descendants do not.”
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