https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/01/tulsa-race-massacre-doj-investigationLate Monday, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced it plans to launch the first-ever federal investigation into the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, in which hundreds of Black Tulsans were killed, thousands were displaced and forced into internment camps overseen by the national guard, and Greenwood, the thriving district once known as “Black Wall Street”, was decimated, looted and burned by a racist mob.
The review, launched by the civil rights division’s Cold Case Unit, comes after a major setback for survivors and descendants of the massacre. In June, Oklahoma’s supreme court dismissed a lawsuit brought by two survivors, Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, and Viola Fletcher, 110. In July, the women once again called for Joe Biden and the justice department to intervene.
Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general who announced the DoJ review, called the Tulsa race massacre “one of the deadliest episodes of mass racial violence in this nation’s history”.
“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,” Clarke said, announcing that the review should be finalized by the end of the year. “We thus are examining available documents, witness accounts, scholarly and historical research and other information on the massacre. When we have finished our federal review, we will issue a report analyzing the massacre in light of both modern and then-existing civil rights law.”
