After months of lobbying and collaboration, the U.S. Department of Justice finally agreed to review and evaluate the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
Damario Solomon-Simmons led the efforts to make this happen. He is an attorney representing the living victims and other descendants of the massacre. He says this is a big step in achieving their goals, like uncovering more answers.
“We only know about 10% of what actually happened. Who actually participated,” Solomon-Simmons said “Those are things we don’t have the capacity as private attorneys to get some of that information that we hope the federal government can help fill in some of those gaps.”
RELATED STORY | The complex history of African Americans and the news
Egunwale Amusan is a descendant of one of the victims.
“People who may not understand this passion, who haven’t been part of this fight from the very beginning, know this: we will never stop fighting,” Amusan said.
Descendants like Amusan want reparations. They also want the DOJ to recognize the race massacre as the largest crime scene in the country’s history.
"While this race massacre happened 103 years ago, in 1921, we acknowledge that there are two survivors, Viola Fletcher (Mother Fletcher) and Lessie Benningfield Randle (Mother Randle), and one victim who passed away late last year, Hugh Van Ellis, known as Uncle Red. We acknowledge descendants of the survivors, and the victims continue to bear the trauma of this act of racial terrorism," said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke. "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."
Based on conversations he’s had with the DOJ, Solomon-Simmons expects the work to be done by the end of this year, but he says its impact will last forever.
RELATED STORY | Student carved racial slur into teammate's chest with box cutter, school says
“[This report] will really, forever … As long as there’s the United States of America, this report will talk about what happened here in Tulsa,” he said, “And hopefully, that will help us get closer to the justice and reparations that are still due.”
More than a century after the massacre, descendants say they deserve more. This decision by the DOJ represents an accomplishment of one of their biggest goals. That accomplishment is not lost on Amusan.
This article was originally published by Brodie Myers for Scripps News Tulsa