Descendants Of Tulsa Massacre Victims Welcome Justice Department’s Review — Cautiously

The Department of Justice announced on Monday a federal review into the two-day racist massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, more than 100 years ago, when white supremacists killed Black civilians while destroying homes and thriving businesses in the predominantly Black community.

The 1921 massacre led to the deaths of at least 300 people after a 19-year-old Black teenager, Dick Rowland, was accused of raping a white woman, Sarah Page. The 35-square-block area where the massacre occurred was known as Black Wall Street, one of the most affluent neighborhoods for Black residents in America.

In making the announcement, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke noted the enhancement of the Justice Department’s civil rights cold case unit following enactment of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.

The Justice Department will not pursue criminal charges, since everyone involved has since died, but it will conduct an evaluation of the massacre to keep on record.

“We hope that official reports, which reflect the Justice Department’s exhaustive efforts to seek justice, at bare minimum, prevent these victims and the tragic ordeals they endured from being lost to history,” Clarke said in a statement.

“We have no expectation that there are living perpetrators who could be criminally prosecuted by us or by the state. Although a commission, historians, lawyers and others have conducted prior examinations of the Tulsa Massacre, we, the Justice Department, never have.”

Descendants of the Black Tulsans who lived through the riot welcomed the announcement, but many told HuffPost they will reserve some skepticism until they see true accountability and amends.

“It can create a path for reparations,” said Egunwale Amusan, whose grandfather Raymond Beard Sr. survived the massacre. “[But it] is unlikely there will be any accountability due to the absence of perpetrators and the absence of federal hate crimes at the time. We know there will be some legal barriers we will have to face as it relates to this.”

Still, Ausman and other descendants view the review of the massacre as a chance for Tulsa to become the model for similar reports in America. Florida, Georgia, Arkansas and at least 27 other state legislatures are making efforts to erase literature and teachings about the plight of Black Americans in the country’s history.

State Rep. Regina Goodwin told HuffPost that the Justice Department’s evaluation of Tulsa’s massacre is coming at a time when its residents already know what occurred. Goodwin’s great-grandfather and grandfather survived the massacre.

“When it is all said and done, there is not going to be any investigation, there is not going to be any prosecution and there is not going to be any compensation. I think the public needs to understand that, and they [DOJ] need to be very clear,” the Oklahoma Democrat said.

In 1997, former state Rep. Don Ross introduced legislation that created the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission, an effort to examine the facts and the historical effects of the massacre that Ross and many others believed were left out of history.

A report was released by the commission in 2001, and Ross wrote in detail about how he learned about the massacre when he was a teenager. It became one of the first steps to portraying America’s history with racism and some of the country’s most egregious acts that have continued to plague communities over a century later.

Ross’s report cites city officials and officers who were involved in the burning of Greenwood. The National Guard apologized in 2021 for its role in the massacre.

“I first learn about the riot when I was 15 from Booker T. Washington High School teacher and survivor W.D. Williams. In his slow, laboring voice Mr. W.D. as he was fondly known, said on the evening of May 31, 1921, his school graduation and prom were canceled,” Ross wrote. The riot was beginning.

Rowland, who made money shining shoes, was surrounded by a white mob calling for his lynching as he was arrested and taken to the courthouse. Armed Black residents began to gather in the area to protect him.

“There was a scuffle between a black and a white man, a shot rang out. The crowd scattered. It was about 10:00 a.m. A race riot had broken out. He said blacks defended their community for awhile, ‘but then the airplanes came dropping bombs.’ All of the black community was burned to the ground and 300 people died,” Ross wrote.

Tiffany Crutcher, an attorney whose great-grandmother survived the massacre, told HuffPost her great-grandmother fled from “racial terror, violence and harm” that day but then said what happened afterward was that a terrorized community found its way to piece itself back together.

Crutcher said victims never got closure or reconciliation following the massacre after the state Supreme Court rejected a reparation lawsuit last June that had been brought by the Black Wall Street massacre survivors.

“What we witnessed, really, after the smoke cleared was the resilience of a community that said we are not going to take injustice lightly,” Crutcher said. “Resilience rose up, and now here we are, another generation carrying the baton, taking on the charge and the challenge of those survivors that were just handed a gold medallion.”

Crutcher told HuffPost that America still needs to remedy “the harm that has been done,” and, for the country to live up to that standard, she thinks the Justice Department review is a step in the right direction.

“Tulsa is the microcosm of what is happening across the country, and if we can get it right in Tulsa, we can get it right anywhere and everywhere. I do feel that Tulsa is the model of reparations in this country,” Crutcher said.

“I know there are a lot of efforts, but this is a unique case here in Tulsa when you think about generational wealth that was created. We did not have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps because we had boots,” Crutcher added, saying it was “stripped away” from them because of racism, hate and bigotry.

U.S. Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) told HuffPost that what was going on in the Greenwood district was about attacking Black wealth in a steadily growing community. Despite living amid significant racism, Black Tulsa residents built a system in which they were building upon wealth.

Green said he is a proponent of reparations and has pushed for America to fully reckon with slavery, which he describes as America’s “original sin.”

“This was something that happened not only in Greenwood but Rosewood, Florida, Louisiana. It happened in many cases in America. But this [Tulsa] case is the one that will bring to light the truths that have been hidden for many years,” Green said.