TULSA, Okla. — Tulsa Race Massacre survivors and their legal team plan to respond to the Friday dismissal of a lawsuit seeking reparations for the 1921 attack.
WATCH LIVE: FOX23 will live stream this response at 3:30 p.m.
Judge Caroline Wall dismissed the case from three survivors, who are now more than 100 years old, looking for reparations for the city and others for the destruction of what used to be Black Wall Street in the Greenwood District.
The Massacre Survivors’ legal team has said they plan to appeal this decision and make that announcement in a news conference Monday.
“I don’t think you’d find anyone who’d argue that the victims of the Race Massacre should be done right. The challenge is do you financially penalize this generations of Tulsans for something criminals did a century ago,” Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum said Monday morning in an interview with FOX23 radio partner KRMG.
The lawsuit, on behalf of Lessie Benningfield Randle, Viola Fletcher and Hughes Van Ellis, was brought under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, saying the actions of the white mob that killed hundreds of Black residents and destroyed what had been the nation’s most prosperous Black business district continue to affect the city today.