TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — The two remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and their legal team are responding publicly for the first time since the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed their historic lawsuit on June 12.
Despite facing pushback, the last two survivors 110-year-old Viola Fletcher and 109-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle are continuing their fight for reparations.
It’s been 103 years since the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed an entire community, burned homes and businesses to the ground and killed hundreds.
The massacre is deemed one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history, yet no court has held a trial addressing the massacre and no perpetrator has been held accountable for it.
It’s been a long fight.
At 110 and 109 years old Mother Fletcher and Mother Randle shared a joint statement saying:
We are profoundly disappointed in the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision to reject our lawsuit and are deeply saddened that we may not live long enough to see the State of Oklahoma, or the United States of America, honestly confront and right the wrongs of one of the darkest days of American history.
But they are not giving up.
After being dismissed by the State of Oklahoma and Congress, now they are asking the United States Department of Justice and President Joe Biden to intervene and open an investigation into the massacre.
Fletcher and Randle have met with President Biden before.
“The 46th president of the United States of America met with the last known three survivors and he said, and I quote, ‘for much too long the history of what happened here was told in silence, only with truly can come healing, justice and repair’,” Tiffany Crutcher, massacre descendant and executive director of Terrence Crutcher Foundation, said. “But that’s not enough the 46th president said, ‘First we have to see, hear and give respect to those lost so many years ago, to all the descendants who suffered and to this community’.”
The Greenwood community hopes President Biden will stand by those words.
Now they are waiting for a response from the White House.
SIGN UP FOR THE CHANNEL 8 NEWSLETTER