OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Attorneys for the final two remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Bloodbath requested the Oklahoma Supreme Court docket final week to rethink the case they dismissed last month and known as on the Biden administration to assist the 2 ladies search justice.
Viola Fletcher, 110, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, are the final recognized survivors of one of many single worst acts of violence against Black people in U.S. historical past. As many as 300 Black individuals had been killed; greater than 1,200 houses, companies, faculties and church buildings had been destroyed; and 1000’s had been pressured into internment camps overseen by the Nationwide Guard when a white mob, together with some deputized by authorities, looted and burned the Greenwood District, also called Black Wall Avenue.
In a petition for rehearing, the ladies requested the court docket to rethink its 8-1 vote upholding the choice of a district court judge in Tulsa last year to dismiss the case.
“Oklahoma, and the USA of America, have failed its Black residents,” the 2 ladies stated in an announcement learn by McKenzie Haynes, a member of their authorized staff. “With our personal eyes, and burned deeply into our reminiscences, we watched white People destroy, kill, and loot.”
“And regardless of these apparent crimes in opposition to humanity, not one indictment was issued, most insurance coverage claims stay unpaid or had been paid for under pennies on the greenback, and Black Tulsans had been pressured to depart their houses and dwell in concern.”
Lawyer Damario Solomon Simmons additionally known as on the U.S. Division of Justice to open an investigation into the bloodbath below the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007, which permits for the reopening of chilly circumstances of violent crimes in opposition to Black individuals dedicated earlier than 1970. A spokesperson for the DOJ declined remark.
The lawsuit was an try below Oklahoma’s public nuisance regulation to drive the town of Tulsa and others to make restitution for the destruction. Attorneys additionally argued that Tulsa appropriated the historic popularity of Black Wall Avenue “to their very own monetary and reputational profit.” They argue that any cash the town receives from selling Greenwood or Black Wall Avenue, together with income from the Greenwood Rising Historical past Middle, must be positioned in a compensation fund for victims and their descendants.
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