Oct. 14, 2024

“We acknowledge descendants of the survivors, and the victims continue to bear the trauma of this act of racial terrorism. We have no expectation that there are living perpetrators who could be criminally prosecuted by us or by the state. We honor the legacy of the Tulsa Race Massacre survivors, Emmett Till, the Act that bears his name, this country and the truth by conducting our own review and evaluation of the massacre. In the words of Ida B. Wells, one of this nation’s most staunch anti-lynching advocates, ‘The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.’” – Assistant U.S. Attorney for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke

For nearly 100 years, few Americans knew the story of one of the most heinous acts of racial terrorism in our history.

Pages were ripped from surviving copies of the local newspaper to erase it from the archives. 

It was only in the last few years that Oklahoma public schools added the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre to the official curriculum.

Now, an official investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department will shine the light of the federal government on the Massacre, bringing some measure of justice for the descendants of the victims.

The review is a long-overdue opportunity to confront the legacy of racial terrorism, and of the enduring economic scars Black Americans bear to this day.

As many as 300 people were slaughtered, with 800 or more seriously injured. About 10,000 people were left homeless as houses, churches, schools and businesses were burned to the ground.

One of the nation’s most affluent Black communities was wiped out, almost overnight, along with its wealth of about $200 million in today’s dollars. No one ever was prosecuted, no restitution ever was made.

Certainly, the specter of shame hangs over this troubling chapter of history, but that’s not the most likely reason it was so long suppressed. Critical race theory suggests that America’s social and economic inequities are the result of deliberate policy choices, and that different policy choices could produce a more equitable society.

To recognize the Black wealth that was taken by force is to recognize that a massive debt is owed. White resentment of Black Tulsa’s wealth was the most likely catalyst for the massacre, not the probably fictitious assault of a17-year-old white girl by a 19-year-old Black shoeshiner.

According to the Chicago Defender, “A rumor has been extant for some time to the effect that it was the desire of white industry or of private citizens to appropriate the lands which the Race had gained possession of. Since the area had become a segregated district to them, the value had increased and white speculators saw a chance for immense profits if they could only drive the inhabitants out.”

The Department of Justice review of the Tulsa Massacre is being conducted under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows the Justice Department to investigate fatal civil rights crimes that occurred on or before Dec. 31, 1979.

Since the passage of the Act the Department has opened at least 138 investigations and closed 122 of them. 

Emmett Till’s murder, and his mother’s decision to allow the world to see his brutalized corpse, galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. Time magazine named it one of the 100 influential images of all time, writing, “For almost a century, African Americans were lynched with regularity and impunity. Now, thanks to a mother’s determination to expose the barbarousness of the crime, the public could no longer pretend to ignore what they couldn’t see.”

The public no longer can pretend to ignore the Tulsa Massacre. Assistant U.S. Attorney for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke said there is “no expectation that there are living perpetrators who could be criminally prosecuted by us or by the state,” but an official report on the investigation will “reflect the Justice Department’s exhaustive efforts to seek justice, at bare minimum, [and] prevent these victims and the tragic or- deals they endured from being lost to history.”

The writer is the president and CEO of the National Urban League.