For more than a century now the Tulsa Race Massacre has raised several questions. How many people were killed? And to what extent does the incident factor in the ongoing struggle for reparations?
Last week, a report that the DNA of one of the victims, exhumed from a gravesite, matched Mrs. Jeanette Batchelor-Young, brought the horrific conflict in the Greenwood District in 1921 a little closer to full disclosure.
Two years ago, the city began excavations to solve some of the pressing questions about the unknown people dumped into several mass gravesites.
How this revelation will play into the fight for reparations is debatable, but the discovery is of importance to the attorneys who asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday to reconsider the case dismissed last week, filed on behalf of Viola Fletcher, 110, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, the two remaining survivors of the massacre.
“Oklahoma, and the United States of America, have failed its Black citizens,” the two women said in a statement read by McKenzie Haynes, a member of their legal team. “With our own eyes, and burned deeply into our memories, we watched white Americans destroy, kill, and loot. And despite these obvious crimes against humanity, not one indictment was issued, most insurance claims remain unpaid or were paid for only pennies on the dollar, and Black Tulsans were forced to leave their homes and live in fear.”
This is not the first time survivors of the massacre have been found and used to fortify the claims for reparations. Johnnie Cochran and Charles Ogletree, both deceased, filed briefs on behalf of their clients, but to no avail.
We hope that the discovery of the mass gravesites and the DNA connection with a living resident, along with a reconsideration of the case dismissed last week, will keep the light on one of the worst moments of terror in U.S. history.
These latest developments certainly will not escape the attention of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, and we will keep you abreast on what actions it will take armed with this new information.
Travesty and injustice slathered on layer after layer over hundreds of years. When the lawsuits by the survivors of the massacre were dismissed by the courts due to the statute of limitations. More proof that the law is an Ass due to the false assumption that there was equal access to justice under the law. Can anyone imagine the victims at that point in time attempting to sue or call for justice? They more than likely would have been disposed of in the park across the street. Beyond that the elected representatives of the people in this day and age simply do not care or are not even remotely interested in assisting the survivors in getting some form of Justice. They have the power to introduce and pass a bill extending the statute of limitations for the survivors. I repeat, they simply do not care. We can never forget we live in probably the greatest nation, but a nation that cannot reconcile itself to it’s alleged principles that run contray to it’s actual inception will go the way of Rome.