Oklahoma court dismisses bid for Tulsa Race Massacre reparations

Survivors of one of many greatest race massacres in US historical past have misplaced their historic authorized bid for reparations over the assault.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court docket dismissed the go well with, filed in 2020 by a trio of survivors, on Wednesday.

An estimated 300 black Individuals had been killed when a white mob razed the Greenwood neighbourhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921.

Solely two identified survivors – Viola Fletcher, 110, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109 – stay. The third, Hughes Van Ellis, died final 12 months at 102.

The plaintiffs had introduced their case below Oklahoma’s public nuisance regulation, arguing that the violence and destruction wrought on the “Black Wall Avenue” space greater than a century in the past continues to resonate as we speak.

The Tulsa County sheriff, county commissioners and the Oklahoma Navy Division had been named as defendants within the go well with.

In its Wednesday ruling, the state’s prime courtroom sided with Tulsa officers in arguing that the plaintiffs’ grievances didn’t entitle them to compensation.

“With respect to their public nuisance declare, although Plaintiffs’ grievances are official, they don’t fall inside the scope of our State’s public nuisance statute,” the courtroom wrote.

In doing so, the nine-judge bench affirmed a decrease courtroom choose’s equivalent ruling final July.

The choose concluded that “merely being linked to a historic occasion doesn’t present an individual with limitless rights to hunt compensation”.

The town of Tulsa mentioned in a press release that it “respects the courtroom’s resolution and affirms the importance of the work the Metropolis continues to do within the North Tulsa and Greenwood communities”.

The town added that it stays dedicated “to working with residents and offering assets to help” these communities.

Nobody has ever been held accountable for the violent occasions of 31 Could 1921.

Along with the 300 estimated deaths, 1000’s of black residents had been assaulted, arrested and left homeless.

This case is probably going the ultimate alternative for Ms Fletcher and Ms Randle to obtain compensation over the Tulsa Race Bloodbath.

“There isn’t any going to the US Supreme Court docket. There isn’t any going to the federal courtroom system. That is it,” their legal professional Damario Solomon-Simmons argued in a authorized transient.