Tulsa Race Massacre descendants meet with DOJ cold case detectives amid federal review

Family members of the two known living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre met for the first time on Thursday with detectives from the Department of Justice’s cold case unit amid a federal review of the 1921 deadly attack by a white mob on Tulsa’s Greenwood section, a thriving Black neighborhood known as "Black Wall Street."

The survivors' attorney, Damario Solomon-Simmons, and Democratic Texas Rep. Al Green spoke out during a press conference on Thursday afternoon after their meeting with detectives from the DOJ Civil Rights Division's Cold Case Unit.

Viola Fletcher, known as “Mother Fletcher,” and Lessie Benningfield Randle, known as “Mother Randle,” are the last known living survivors, according to the DOJ, after Hugh Van Ellis, known as “Uncle Red,” died on Oct. 9, 2023 at 102.

“The first thing I want to say is we thank the Department of Justice and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for launching this review and evaluation. But it was very clear from everyone they have met over the last 48 hours, including the survivors, everyone wants a full investigation, everyone,” said Solomon-Simmons. “Everyone wants actual accountability of the massacre. They want those who perpetrated this harm that started in 1921 and continues to today, to be held accountable,” he said.

The meeting with DOJ cold case detectives comes weeks after the department announced the first-ever federal review of what Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, referred to as "one of the deadliest episodes of mass racial violence in this nation's history."

Solomon-Simmons said although survivors Benningfield Randle and Fletcher could not be in attendance, Randle’s granddaughter and Fletcher's son were there as he read a joint statement from the massacre survivors: “We desperately needed this federal lifeline amid the state's and city's ongoing effort to gaslight us into our graves. To this day, secrets about the atrocity that we fled remain hidden in long-suppressed government documents and corporate records in historical archives and concealed in insurance company records,” read the statement. “Thanks to the DOJ review, our nation will have the opportunity for the first time to know the truth about the physical, despicable plot to put an affluent Black community --- quote, unquote --- 'in its place.'”

Clarke announced the review of the massacre on Sept. 30 --- 69 years after two white men were acquitted of all charges in the murder of Emmett Till by an all-white, all-male jury. Till, a Black 14-year-old boy, was kidnapped, beaten and lynched in Mississippi in August 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman. The accused admitted in 1956 to killing Till.

“Despite strong evidence and an in-court identification, those men were acquitted by an all-white jury that deliberated for less than two hours. The men did, in fact, kill Emmett Till. They later admitted it. But both escaped punishment,” Clarke said.

“The trial of Emmett Till’s killers is one of the most notorious examples of racial injustice common throughout the South — and across the entire country — in the Jim Crow era,” she continued. “... Far too often, local prosecutors, courts and the white community did nothing or, as with Emmett Till’s murder, rendered a verdict that communicated an unmistakable message to the victim’s family: your loved one did not matter.”

In announcing the federal review of the Tulsa massacre, Clarke referenced the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, a federal law passed in 2008 that authorized the government to reopen civil rights crimes resulting in death that occurred on or before Dec. 31, 1979.

She said that the “catalyst” for the massacre in Tulsa mirrored the Till murder because it was sparked by the claim that a Black youth inappropriately engaged with a white woman.

Clarke said that while the DOJ has “no expectation that there are living perpetrators who could be criminally prosecuted by us or by the state,” the department’s review acknowledges that the “descendants of the survivors, and the victims, continue to bear the trauma of this act of racial terrorism.”

Solomon-Simmons celebrated the DOJ’s decision to open the review during a Sept. 30 press conference.

"It is about time! It only took 103 years," he said, adding that DOJ’s decision is credited to the multiple meetings advocates for the survivors have had with DOJ officials over the years.

"This community would never stop fighting for reparations. This community would never forget what happened to our people, just for being Black, just for being successful," Solomon-Simmons said.