Open Letter: Angry over Oklahoma Supreme Court Decision and Heartbroken for Survivors

Sign up for our free newsletters, created for the culture by the culture!

Like many of you, I am heartbroken and angry at the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision to deny justice to the two remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: 110-year-old Mother Viola Ford Fletcher and 109-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle.

Yesterday, I shared a raw and personal video response because I didn’t have the emotional strength to write one. Also, I wanted the public, and the eight justices who made this decision, to see the deep communal trauma and generational impact of their decision. It is a repeating narrative of denying justice to survivors and descendants that we are all too familiar with. 

Nevertheless, we are angry and mad as hell. 

The thought that these last two survivors might never see a trial for the worst domestic attack on Black lives in U.S. history is infuriating not only to me but to Black people across this country. This is an act of judicial violence like Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Shelby County v. Holder.

Hence, the ruling was expected. Because we have seen this type of judiciary action against Black redress and equity before.

While I am not related to Mother Fletcher and Mother Randle, as a descendant of a family that survived the Massacre and someone who traveled with the survivors along with other descendants to witness their testimonies before Congress, I can empathize with them. We feel the collective harm widely. 

When they cried while delivering their historical testimonies on Capitol Hill, everyone in the audience and I cried, too. That is the only time I’ve seen them visibly upset. They had to reopen old wounds and revisit painful memories of the massacre and its impact on our beloved Greenwood community for the historic congressional record. 

But those tears were eased by our White House visit with Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman and first Black Vice President of our nation, who showed Mr. Van Ellis, whom we call “Uncle Red,” more grace and respect than the City of Tulsa ever had. I still remember his voice and the smile on his face when she kneeled and placed his feet onto the footrest of his wheelchair.

Two years later, seeing the possibility of justice unfold in a Tulsa courtroom was like a scene from a movie. My mother and aunt cried tears of joy. Damario Solomon-Simmons, the lead attorney for the Justice for Greenwood Campaign, leaped with excitement at Judge Caroline Wall’s announcement. Tears of joy streamed from all our eyes. “Justice,” Solomon-Simmons shouted. “For Greenwood,” we descendants and community members echoed.

The hope that our elders might receive recompense for the White mob’s crime—a mob empowered by our city government to wage a race war against Greenwood—gave us a glimmer of hope. We knew that if the survivors could get justice, the possibility of our ancestors receiving it might be realized. She would deny the survivors and by extension the descendants and community.

So, Wednesday was yet another blow toward our Oklahoma getting it right. The state continues failing us by protecting the city of Tulsa and its institutions. Hence, our anger is righteous.

For those of you who are thinking this case is just about money or making White people today pay for their ancestors’ crimes, you are woefully mistaken. This pursuit of justice for the victims, survivors, and even the descendants is about holding local governments and corrupted institutions accountable — governments that in the 1920s knowingly and proudly harbored Klansmen.

So, I leave you with this: “Let judgment rain down as a mighty stream,” upon all who played a role in the massacre and on all who deny justice to Mother Randle, Mother Fletcher and descendants. 

I encourage you to continue supporting the Justice For Greenwood Campaign and The Black Wall Street Times so we may continue fighting for the survivors and descendants and bringing crucial, direct reporting to our community and beyond.

Sincerely, 

Nehemiah D. Frank, Founder & Editor-in-Chief of The Black Wall Street Times