CITY OF OKLAHOMA — The Oklahoma Supreme Court has denied a request to reconsider its ruling dismissing a lawsuit filed by the last two living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa massacre.
Seven members of the court dismissed their case without comment on Tuesday the request by 110-year-old Viola Fletcher and 109-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle to rehearse his statement in June that one decision by a district judge in Tulsa to dismiss the case.
Judge James Edmondson would have reheard the case, but Judge Richard Darby did not vote.
Fletcher and Randle survived the massacre considered one of the deadliest worst single violent acts against black people in American history.
As many as 300 black people were murdered, more than 1,200 homes, businesses, schools and churches were destroyed, and thousands were sent to internment camps run by the National Guard. This occurred as a white mob, including several law enforcement officers, looted and burned the Greenwood District, also known as Black Wall Street.
Damario Solomon-Simmons, an attorney for Fletcher and Benningfield, was not immediately available for comment.
Solomon-Simmons, after filing the motion for reconsideration in July, also asked the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the massacre under the Emmett to Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act.
“President Biden sat down with my clients. He promised them he would make sure they got justice,” Solomon-Simmons said at the time.
“He then went into the next room and gave a powerful speech telling the nation that he stood with the survivors and descendants of the Tulsa massacre … we call on President Biden to keep his promise to these survivors, to this community, and to Black people across the country,” Solomon-Simmons said.
The Emmett Till Act allows for the reopening of old cases of violent crimes against black people committed before 1970.
The lawsuit was an attempt to force the city of Tulsa and other cities to pay damages for the vandalism, based on Oklahoma’s public nuisance law.
Attorneys also argued that Tulsa has appropriated the historical reputation of Black Wall Street “for its own financial and reputational benefit.” They argue that all money the city receives from promoting Greenwood or Black Wall Street, including revenue from the Greenwood Rising History Center, should go into a compensation fund for victims and their descendants.