Photo: Library of Congress, American National Red Cross Photograph Collection

As we all are well apprised of what took place in Tulsa-the question arises as to whether reparations are in order and if those reparations will be in proportion to the harm-not an abstract concept-survivors deserve repair!  I’ll begin with a definition of reparations from the Human Rights Watch 2020 report on Tulsa compiled by Driesen Heath:

1.  Restitution- a return back to its morally acceptable place
2.  Economic compensation -between 50 to100 million in property damage (estimated)
3.  Rehabilitation of psychological and emotional damages to descendants 
4.  Satisfaction-truth telling and official apologies to provide healing to victims. 
5.  Guarantee of no repetition of action 

There are four pivotal occurrences surrounding Tulsa and Reparations:

• Grand Jury Decision in 1921

denied responsibility by governmental officials, exonerated white rioters, and indictment of African American victims by framing the massacre as a riot; hundreds of suits filed-all dismissed

• 2001 Findings of the 1997 Commission
  • In 1997 the Oklahoma legislature organized an eleven-member the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission in order to document and collect data and conduct an official examination of the circumstances surrounding the Riot and its after-effects and to make recommendations to the governor and the state legislature.
  • In adopting the Commission’s Report on the 28th of 2001, “the state legislature for the first time ‘freely acknowledge[d] its moral responsibility on behalf of the state of Oklahoma and its citizens” for subordinating African Americans. Id. The legislature also pronounced that ‘[o]fficial reports and accounts of the time that viewed the Tulsa Race Riot as a ‘Negro uprising’ were incorrect.’” 
  • Recommendations:
    • Reparation payments to survivors and descendants
    • Scholarship fund to benefit students (was set up but limited and didn’t designate specific category for massacre descendants
    • Economic enterprise zone in Greenwood
    • Create a memorial and proper burial of human remains
• 2004 Alexander vs. City of Oklahoma suit
  • Didn’t ask for monetary compensation only funds for education and health-100 Plaintiffs-not a class action suit- represented by Dream Team, Charles Ogletree, Johnnie Cochran and eight other attorneys-
  • City of Tulsa for failing to provide protection, the police department that deputized members of the white community; and the State of Oklahoma for authorizing the National Guard to detain the victims while their community burned.  It was official government action that fueled carnage; they even failed to count every person who perished or allow for proper internment;   
  • After massacre: 7,500 Black Tulsans were held in concentration camps and not allowed exit without approval of a white person; denied insurance claims-only one approved -a white who owned a pawn shop and had a gun stolen;  outside monies were denied; City passed legislation to prevent the rebuilding of area-a fire ordinance that prohibited the construction of wooden homes; redlining and segregation prevented them from relocating in outer areas; Greenwood officials wanted to  designate as an industrial zone with railroad port and later a major highway was erected through the heart of the community-failed to provide social services to the area; and prevented the redevelopment of Tulsa through diverting funds to other areas and disinvestment.
  • Ruling; dismissed on grounds of Statute of Limitations:
    • Stating that facts were available demonstrating government culpability
    • Scott Ellsworth’s book, Death in a Promised Land, in the early 1980s, which contained some of the facts included in the Commission’s Report

Dissent:

• Plaintiffs do not argue that they were unaware of the facts, their claim is that the continued renunciation of government culpability by those in power created an impenetrable barrier to justice

• plaintiffs argue that a combination of at least four factors summarized as follows warrant equitable tolling: (1) an openly hostile racial environment, (2) denial of responsibility by governmental officials, (3) the grand jury’s exoneration of white rioters, and (4) the grand jury’s indictment of African-American victim conditions existed up to the 2001 

• the state has fraudulently concealed key facts pertaining to responsibility, no amount of diligence could have uncovered the key fact of the government’s own admission of responsibility the plaintiffs
•  the question of whether the Oklahoma governments engaged in fraudulent concealment should have gone to the jury

• 2020 Petition

2020 Petition by Justice for Greenwood Team-Argued that unlawful acts and omissions that began with Tulsa race massacre and continue to the present day-

• assessment of property values from 1921 to the present 
• assessment of trauma
• special tax assessment for businesses 
• creation of victim’s compensation fund to be distributed as grants 
• Blacks who have resided in area for 10 years would be eligible
• no interest loans 
• oversight board and victim’s compensation administrator 
• property development
• mental health and educational programs or quality of life programs 
• Land Trust 
• immunity from city taxes 
• scholarship program 
• laws and policies to prevent reoccurrence 
• punitive damages and attorney fees
• Lastly, the city is now profiting off the massacre through tourism and the descendants do not receive any of the proceeds.  

Present Impact:

• 35% of Tulsa was redlined and viewed as hazardous
• infant mortality tripled
• low birth rate
• life expectancy is 10 years less than that of whites
• food desert
• wealth income gap
• health disparity
• increase in police brutality
• limited education and business opportunities

What legal reforms are necessary for victims to pursue restitution without legal barriers? 

Quote from 2004 dissent: “what happened in Tulsa stays as important and remains as unresolved today as in 1921. had coldly, deliberately and systematically assaulted one victim, a whole community, intending to eliminate it as a community to keep the community “in its place” the government was its “potential instrument”-the government did not prevent, protect or punish the deed!

THE 2020 PETITION ENCAPSULATES THE GLOBAL/WIDER CLAIMS OF REPARATION

1. Badge of slavery under Section 2 of the 13th amendment-Congress can protect and regulate public or widespread private action, aimed at any racial group or population that has previously been held in slavery or servitude, that mimics the law of slavery and has significant potential to lead to the de facto re-enslavement or legal subjugation of the targeted group. Tulsa and a wider sense the Criminal Justice system used to incarcerate, and exploit said population. International law upholds same principle in doctrine “crimes against humanity.”
2. Highlights the actions after the massacre occurred thus creating the nexus between past injustices and present status: Internment; detainment; policies to prevent redevelopment; findings of the Grand Jury; dismissal of lawsuits; withholding of city services; diverting funds from Greenwood to outlying areas.
   1. Globally: Caribbean-Apprenticeship Program; the forced payment of reparations by the enslaved of the enslaver; segregation; exclusion from key policy decisions; maintenance of economic subordination.
   2. Africa: genocide of populations; colonialism; suppression and assassination of anti-colonial forces; segregation; Apartheid in South African and Namibia; continued subordination through debt and International Monetary Fund (IMF) requisites.
   3. America: Jim Crow segregation; denial of housing, employment and education opportunities; wealth gap; school to prison pipeline; health disparities.
3. Unjust Enrichment…global actors, private enterprises, state and localities that have profited off the exploitation of labor and the production of wealth by people of African descent.