Tulsa race massacre: ‘No avenue’ for criminal case in connection with attack, Justice Department says

Oklahoma City
AP
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The first US Department of Justice Review of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre concluded Friday that while federal prosecution may have been possible a century ago, there is no longer an avenue to pursue a criminal case more than 100 years after one of the The worst racial attacks in American history..

The Department of Justice said in the start of your research He had no expectation that anyone would be prosecuted, but in a more than 120-page report federal investigators described the scope and impact of the massacre, an attack by a white mob in a prosperous black district that left up to 300 dead and 1,200 homes destroyed. , businesses, schools and churches destroyed.

“Now, the perpetrators are long dead, the statutes of limitations for all civil rights charges expired decades ago, and there are no viable avenues for further investigation,” the report states.

Among the findings of the Justice Department investigation are federal reports from just days after the massacre, in 1921, by an agent from the FBI’s precursor agency. But investigators today said they found no evidence that any federal prosecutors evaluated those reports.

“It may be that federal prosecutors considered bringing charges and, after considering them, did not do so for reasons that would be understandable if we had a record of the decision,” the report concluded, adding that if the department did not seriously consider such charges, “then The failure to do so is disappointing.”

The report also examined the role of several people and organizations in the massacre, including the Tulsa Police Department, the local sheriff, the Oklahoma National Guard and then-Tulsa Mayor TD Evans, and determined that each played a role. into chaos and destruction, either by failing to act or actively participating in the attack.

Damario Solomon-Simmons, a lawyer for the last known survivors of the massacre, Viola Fletcher and Lessie Benningfield Randle, both 110, did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on the report. Solomon-Simmons had previously called the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the massacre a “happy occasion.”

Victor Luckerson, a black author and historian who wrote a book about Tulsa’s Greenwood district, said it is valuable for the government to establish a definitive record of the attack.

“Having government documents available lays the groundwork for the possibility of reparations,” Luckerson said. “In any of those discussions about reparations, one of the first questions is how do we establish a factual record of what happened?”

An investigator working for a state commission in 1999 estimated the damage caused by the attack at $1.8 million in 1921 dollars, a figure the report said would be about $32.2 million. currently.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court in June dismissed a lawsuit by survivorsdashing the hope of racial justice advocates that the city would financially compensate for the attack.

The nine-member court upheld the decision made by a district court judge in Tulsa last yearruling that the plaintiff’s complaints about the destruction of the Greenwood district, while legitimate, did not fall within the scope of the state public nuisance statute.