Tulsa Race Massacre Victims See ‘Nuisance’ Suit as Justice Route

Lawyers for survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre pushed back Wednesday against city efforts to end a lawsuit that seeks compensation for the casualties and destruction from one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history.

The lawsuit, also filed on behalf of victims’ descendants, alleges the city of Tulsa violated Oklahoma’s public nuisance law with the massacre in the Greenwood business district, which led to an unknown number of deaths, with estimates ranging as high as 300.

“A public nuisance cuts across every aspect of life in Greenwood,” Damario Solomon-Simmons, who filed the 2020 lawsuit for the three survivors, said at a news conference.

The comments are part of a broader effort to rectify wrongs in Tulsa and elsewhere in the U.S. as more evidence emerges of racial justice inequities, especially in policing. President Joe Biden spoke in Tulsa on Tuesday to commemorate the massacre’s 100th anniversary, saying, “For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness.”

Although there have been other legal efforts in past decades on behalf of Tulsa massacre victims, none have managed to compensate thousands of people who were affected.

The new attempt was filed in the Tulsa County District Court. In addition to the city, it names the Tulsa County sheriff, the city’s Chamber of Commerce, the Tulsa Development Authority, the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, the Board of County Commissions for Tulsa County and the Oklahoma National Guard.

Under Oklahoma law, a public nuisance is an act or omission that affects an entire community or neighborhood. Oklahoma successfully invoked the public nuisance law recently, winning a $572 million court award in 2019 against Johnson & Johnson on grounds the giant drugmaker violated the law by promoting prescription opioids.

New York-based law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel has joined the Tulsa massacre lawsuit as pro bono counsel, filing responses to plaintiff efforts to nix the lawsuits.

“We’re asking for the nuisance to be abated,” said McKenzie Haynes, a litigation associate at Schulte, at the news conference. That involves a number of steps including a victims’ compensation fund; educational resources; and ending the payment of state and local taxes, she added. “This is because economic justice was taken from them.”

In addition to pursuing the lawsuit, Randall Adams, special counsel for Schulte, said at the news conference that the firm will be trying to identify insurance companies which denied Greenwood client claims and banks who refused to reimburse account holders on grounds they lacked the proper identification.

Schulte has about 30 lawyers and 15 staff working on the litigation, as well as other areas including tax, real estate and insurance. That also includes obtaining official public records, which were lost or destroyed, to be used to shore up claims by the known survivors, and victims’ descendants, who could number in the thousands.

While the lawyers are intensifying their efforts, Tulsa’s Mayor, G.T. Bynum, on May 31 posted an apology on behalf of the city’s government for failure to protect the community and “to do right by victims.”

While Tulsa has thus far declined compensation for victims, Bynum added: “While no municipal elected official in Tulsa today was alive in 1921, we are the stewards of the same government and an apology for those failures if outs to deliver.”

In the massacre, White mobs, prompted by a Black teenager who allegedly assaulted a White woman elevator operator, obliterated the once booming Greenwood area. The community was often called the Black Wall Street because of its many businesses, including hotels and restaurants owned and operated by Black people.

When some armed Black residents showed up to rescue an accused Black man from being lynched, the mob began killing and burning property. The man who allegedly assaulted the woman was never charged.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said Black bodies were buried in secret. Instead of looking into a crime, city officials ignored the event and are now trying to profit off the damage by turning the area into a destination for tourists, the plaintiffs lawyers said.

An earlier lawsuit by race riot victims ended up in 2005 with the U.S. Supreme Court deferring to a lower-court ruling that victims waited too long to file claims. The survivors filed their case in 2003, on grounds the state’s two-year limitation on filing such cases did not apply because of the official cover-up in the riot’s aftermath.

When the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals viewed the case, it noted that the race riot was “a tragic chapter in our collective history,” but concluded there was “no legal avenue” for plaintiffs to bring their claims.

Because the current case in state court relies on the public nuisance law, the statute of limitations doesn’t apply.