(TULSA – October 24, 2024) – The two last living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre today expressed their bewilderment at being excluded from the commission that the City of Tulsa says it has launched as a path to reparations for those most impacted by Greenwood’s destruction.
Lessie Benningfield Randle,109, and Viola Fletcher,110 – who in 1921 fled from the white mob that killed countless Black people and razed the Greenwood district to the ground – hoped to have a role in the Beyond Apology Commission by the time it launched on Oct 18. But their requests to participate in the commission have gone ignored, and their lead attorney, Damario Solomon-Simmons, was similarly rejected last week.
“The cold shoulder that we and our legal representative have received from the Commission is beyond hurtful, and reflects the City’s decades-long history of shutting out massacre survivors who want to see justice while we’re still alive,” the survivors said in a joint statement.
The rejection of the survivors comes amid the news that the purported reparations commission will not advance a plan for reparations in the form of financial compensation, a move that has sparked outrage. Mayor GT Bynum has repeatedly dismissed the idea of financial restitution for massacre survivors and descendants despite the City’s role in the massacre and cover-up.
“We sought a leading voice in shaping the commission’s work in part because we believe any true reparations effort for a crime of this scale must go beyond housing assistance and provide direct monetary reparations for survivors and descendants,” the survivors continued.
“It is particularly unconscionable that the City would exhume bodies of massacre victims—some of whom bear the evidence of burns and bullet wounds—and then establish a reparations commission that does nothing to bring peace to their families or accountability for their murders.”
Read the full statement from the survivors here.