On Friday, the Department of Justice (DoJ) released its report on the Tulsa race massacre after announcing the review last September.
The report came more than 100 years after a June 1921 report by the justice department’s Bureau of Investigation, a precursor to the FBI, blamed the massacre on Black men and alleged that perpetrators did not violate any federal laws.
The Friday DoJ report, however, acknowledged that the attack by white citizens on Black residents “was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence”.
“The Tulsa race massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general of the DoJ’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings, and locked the survivors in internment camps.”
“Until this day, the justice department has not spoken publicly about this race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa. This report breaks that silence by rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation’s past. This report lays bare new information and shows that the massacre was the result not of uncontrolled mob violence, but of a coordinated, military-style attack on Greenwood.”
The 126-page report was conducted by a team of lawyers and investigators from the Emmett Till Cold Case Unit of the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division who “spoke with survivors and with descendants of survivors, examined firsthand accounts of the massacre given by individuals who are now deceased, studied primary source materials, spoke to scholars of the massacre and reviewed legal pleadings, books, and scholarly articles relating to the massacre”, according to the department.
Despite the report’s findings, Clarke noted that “there is no living perpetrator for the justice department to prosecute”. Last June, the Oklahoma supreme court threw out a lawsuit brought by Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, two Tulsa race massacre survivors, that sought to make the city of Tulsa pay restitution to survivors and their descendants. Randle and Fletcher, who are both 110, were children at the time of the massacre.
The ‘invasion’ of Greenwood
On 31 May and 1 June 1921, white Tulsans put Greenwood, a community now remembered as Black Wall Street, under siege.
The DoJ’s findings acknowledged the role of Tulsa law enforcement in the massacre, including that of Tulsa police who “deputized hundreds of white residents, many of whom – immediately before being awarded a badge – had been drinking and agitating for [a lynching]”. According to the report, more than 500 men were deputized in less than 30 minutes.
The report includes reference to Walter White, a Black civil rights advocate who could pass for white. He wrote that he only had to provide his name, age and address to be appointed as a special duty. Following his appointment, White reported that he was told he “could now ‘go out and shoot any [N-word] you see and the law’ll be behind you’”. The review includes multiple acknowledgments of the extensive role of law enforcement and city officials encouraging white Tulsans to murder their Black neighbors.
It also namechecks several residents who inflamed the crowd or participated in the chaos, describing the actions of white Tulsans as systematic and planned. Organized by the Tulsa police department and local members of the national guard, and aided by white veterans of the American Legion, white Tulsans “invaded” Greenwood, reads the report. They “looted, burned and destroyed 35 city blocks while Greenwood’s residents tried desperately to defend their homes”.
Tulsa police and the national guard disarmed Black residents and forced many into “makeshift camps under armed guard”. Additionally, the DoJ concluded that there were “credible reports” that at least some law enforcement officers “participated in murder, arson and looting”.
“As the fires consumed Greenwood, many Black families fled for their lives, leaving behind their homes and valuable items. White residents chased them across and beyond the city, taking into custody men, women, children, the elderly and the infirm, and looting the homes they left behind. The destruction of the district was total. The survivors were left with little to nothing.”
Following the attack, victims of the massacre were not compensated for the loss of their homes or businesses, nor did they receive legal justice for the people who were killed, some of whom are documented by name in the report. Though the city promised to help Greenwood rebuild, the DoJ found that Tulsa’s government actually “put up obstacles to residential reconstruction”, including rejecting outside aid. In a land grab, Tulsa officials went so far as to impose fire codes that priced residents out of the area.
Instead of seeking prosecution, the report aims to document officially what occurred. Clarke plans to convene with members of the Greenwood district, survivors and descendants of the Tulsa race massacre, the Tulsa civil rights community and other stakeholders.
