Justice is urged to intervene in Tulsa

Survivors want feds involved in search for mass graves

Tulsa Race Massacre survivors and the descendants of victims have asked the U.S. Justice Department to intervene in the city’s search for mass graves.

Justice for Greenwood, a foundation representing three known massacre survivors, as well as descendants, historians and activists, sent a letter Friday to formally request that the Justice Department open an investigation under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act to determine what happened during the century-old massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history.

The request comes weeks after the city reburied remains that were exhumed from a mass grave discovered in a city-owned cemetery. Still undetermined: whether the mass grave in Oaklawn Cemetery is connected to the 1921 rampage that left as many as 300 Black people dead and the all-Black neighborhood of Greenwood in ruins.

Tulsa officials reinterred the remains over the objections of massacre survivors, descendants of victims and members of the 1921 Mass Graves Oversight Committee, which voted to delay the reburial of the remains until the city had completed its investigation.

Damario Solomon-Simmons, the lead attorney in a lawsuit filed in 2020 by massacre survivors and descendants demanding that the city “repair the damage” caused by the attack, said Tulsa has a conflict of interest in investigating the massacre.

“There are innumerable reasons why the Department of Justice should intervene in this case,” attorneys wrote in the request letter. “First, the City perpetrated the massacre and then led the cover up of the massacre for 75 years. Over the last 20 years and currently, the City’s official position is they are not responsible for the horrendous loss of life, land, or livelihood that they caused.”

The attorneys questioned whether the city could “be trusted to handle this mass grave search with integrity” and accountability. “The known and suspected mass grave sites are crime scenes,” the letter said. “As such, these crime scenes should not be investigated by the very perpetrator(s) of the crime, let alone entities we know have failed to adequately investigate and prosecute those responsible for the crimes.”

Tulsa officials declined to comment on the request for the Justice Department’s intervention, citing pending litigation, city Communications Director Michelle Brooks said.