The Case for Tulsa Race Massacre Reparations Lives On

A judge in Oklahoma recently ignored a motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit calling for reparations for the descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Lessie Benningfield Randle is 107-years-old. Viola Fletcher is 107-years-old. Hughes Van Ellis is 101-years-old. All three of them were alive just over a century ago when a white mob terrorized the prosperous, all-Black Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma in a moment recognized as the Tulsa Race Massacre. They are the survivors of that horrid history who have also lived through some of the most disgustingly violent moments that the United States has either directly enacted on Black people, or allowed to happen to Black people. They are members of a community that never was able to regain its economic footing after the atrocities of May 31 and June 1, 1921. And their hope of seeing any semblance of justice was almost completely faded.