Case For Reparations Discussed As Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Nears

An attorney leading a lawsuit over reparations for the Tulsa Race Massacre is making his case this weekend while there’s media attention focused on Tulsa.

Damario Solomon-Simmons is speaking several times at the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival about the importance of paying back the losses incurred in 1921.

“If we can't get a victory in Tulsa when we have living survivors, then how can we get a victory on the national level?” Solomon-Simmons said.

Solomon-Simmons was part of a panel at the festival with participants urging that not just the three known survivors, but all of the descendants, and perhaps all Black people, deserve compensation for past and present injustices.  

“This slavery was government sanctioned. Tulsa, Greenwood, was government-sanctioned,” U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee from Texas said.

Representative Cori Bush of Missouri said “We don't talk about how white supremacy is in every single aspect of our country, and our life,” U.S. Representative Cori Bush of Missouri said.  

The panel discussion had a friendly audience at the festival, while the actual case is held up in litigation and politics. There's also fresh bitterness over the soon-to-open Greenwood Rising history center, which is the result of a $30 million dollar fundraising effort some believe should have instead been focused on cash support for the descendants of massacre victims.

“You can't have the government throw up a history center and call it reparations,” Human Rights Watch researcher Dreisen Heath said.

“The truth of the matter is that people like (Tulsa) mayor (G.T.) Bynum, who says he's against paying reparations, is really against paying Black people what we're owed,” Solomon-Simmons said.

Solomon-Simmons vows to hold the city and state accountable for the events of 1921, arguing the survivors are tired of waiting.