Japanese Americans from the National Nikkei Reparations Coalition are pressing outgoing President Joe Biden to pursue reparations and a full investigation for the Tulsa Race Massacre survivors while he has the power to act.
by Deon Osborne – The Black Wall Street Times
TULSA, Okla.–A group of Japanese Americans whose ancestors received reparations from the U.S. government are calling on President Biden to provide reparations to the two last known living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre before his term in office ends on January 20, 2025.
“Given the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election, we implore President Biden and his Administration to use his executive powers to deliver reparations before the end of his presidential term to Ms. Viola Ford Fletcher and Ms. Lessie Benningfield Randle, the two known living survivors of the Tulsa Massacre,” said the National Nikkei Reparations Coalition.
The California-based organization is made up of Japanese American descendants of World War II internment camp victims. Delegations have previously visited Greenwood on multiple occasions to offer support.
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Their message to Biden comes less than two months before he turns over power to President-elect Donald Trump. It also comes just weeks ahead of a Dec. 31 deadline for the Department of Justice to produce a report on its review of the 1921 massacre.
Between the hours of May 31 and June 1, 1921, a White mob numbering in the thousands, sanctioned by the city government, destroyed the historic Greenwood District and killed upwards of 300 Black men, women and children.
Thousands of Black residents were displaced and temporarily forced into internment camps around the city, according to the Tulsa Historical Society.
“Japanese Americans remember how 125,000 of our people were forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast and unjustly incarcerated by the United States government during World War II. We know what disappearance of our family members feel like and what destruction of our communities look like,” the coalition stated.
Japanese Americans demand reparations for Tulsa survivors
Formed in 2022, the coalition is made up of organizations that support reparations to American descendants of chattel slavery. Its members include Japanese Americans, Black Americans and activists from other communities who first came together to lobby Congress for the passage of H.R. 40 in 2021, a bill that calls for a reparations study.
In their statement, they called on Biden to take the DOJ review into a full investigation and to hold the government entities that helped perpetrate the massacre accountable. To this day, not a single person or entity has ever faced criminal liability.
“We also know that reparations are necessary and reparations are possible because we won a measure of justice in 1988 when the US government officially apologized and paid reparations to our community,”
The Coalition stated, referring to a bill providing cash payments to Japanese Americans survivors of internment camps. Republican President Ronald Reagan signed the bill in 1988.
“So, what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. For here we admit a wrong; here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law,” Reagan said before signing the bill, which provided $20,000 payments to 60,000 Japanese American survivors.
Oklahoma refuses to right a wrong
Japanese Americans outside of Oklahoma call for reparations to Tulsa survivors. Meanwhile, neither the city of Tulsa, nor the state of Oklahoma have moved forward on decades-old recommendations for reparations to the survivors and descendants of one of the nation’s worst instances of racial domestic terrorism.
An interim study at the Oklahoma Capitol in 2023 explored the recommendations with updates on its lack of implementation. A newly formed Tulsa Reparations Commission is exploring housing and equitable policies directed to survivors and descendants. Yet, neither the state or city efforts have gone as far as providing direct cash payments.
On the federal level, a bill to establish the Historic Greenwood District—Black Wall Street National Monument recently moved out of a Senate committee. It awaits a full Senate vote, though it would not provide reparations.
What will the DOJ review lead to?
A years-long state legal battle for restitution and repair ended in a dismissal by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in June. Meanwhile, Tulsa Race Massacre survivors Mother Fletcher and Mother Randle continue to seek justice, each at 110 years old each.
Their lead counsel, civil rights attorney and Justice for Greenwood Foundation founder Damario Solomon-Simmons, urged the federal government to take action.
It responded with a decision from The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights to open the first-ever federal review of the massacre at the end of September. The announcement of the review offered a sliver of hope to a community rebuilding from the ashes.
“When we have finished our federal review, we will issue a report analyzing the massacre in light of both modern and then-existing civil rights law. We hope to have our overall review finalized by the end of the year,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke announced on Sept. 30.
Time is running out
When first announced, the reaction from members of the community was full of hope. “That the Department of Justice has decided to take this on and just look into it, it says that we are not forgotten,” Oklahoma state Senator-elect Regina Goodwin (D-Tulsa), a descendant of Tulsa Race Massacre survivors, said after the announcement of the review.
With the DOJ’s self-imposed timeline just a couple weeks away, advocates for the survivors want Biden to elevate the DOJ review into a full investigation. They’re concerned the review won’t include all the evidence or result in substantial action.
“We implore the Department to take all necessary steps to immediately broaden the scope of its review into a formal investigation that explores all angles of the Massacre and its continued harm,” attorney Solomon-Simmons wrote in a Nov. 15 letter to the DOJ.
Echoing his sense of urgency, Japanese Americans from the National Nikkei Reparations Coalition pressed Biden to pursue reparations for the Tulsa Race Massacre survivors while he has the power to act.
The Coalition urges Biden’s DOJ “to go beyond a review, provide direct reparations, and hold the individuals and institutions accountable for orchestrating and perpetrating the massacre and subsequent anti-Black laws and conditions, including the deputized White citizens from Tulsa and outside territories, the City of Tulsa, Tulsa County, Tulsa’s Sheriff Department and the State of Oklahoma.”
The Black Wall Street Times has reached out to Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights for a response.
