TULSA, OK (KTUL) — The last two living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre expressed disappointment in being excluded from a reparations commission.
According to the communications team with Justice for Greenwood, Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum launched the Beyond Apology Commission as a path to reparations for those impacted.
Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, and Viola Fletcher, 110, hoped to have a role in the commission by the time it launched on Oct. 18, according to Justice for Greenwood.
“The cold shoulder that we and our legal representative have received from the Commission is beyond hurtful, and reflects the City’s decades-long history of shutting out massacre survivors who want to see justice while we’re still alive,” the survivors said in a joint statement.
The exclusion comes amid news that the commission will not advance a plan for reparations for financial compensation, according to Justice for Greenwood.
“We sought a leading voice in shaping the commission’s work in part because we believe any true reparations effort for a crime of this scale must go beyond housing assistance and provide direct monetary reparations for survivors and descendants,” the survivors continued. “It is particularly unconscionable that the City would exhume bodies of massacre victims—some of whom bear the evidence of burns and bullet wounds—and then establish a reparations commission that does nothing to bring peace to their families or accountability for their murders.”
Read the survivors’ full statement here.