The City recently launched its Beyond Apology Commission, which Mayor GT Bynum is touting as a path to reparations for those harmed by the Tulsa Race Massacre. However, we, the last two living survivors of the Massacre, trust that the public will not be fooled by the City’s latest attempt to feign interest in atoning for the key role it played in planning the destruction and erasure of Greenwood.
Sadly, the commission that claims reparations as its goal admits it will not advance a plan for financial compensation, ignoring the needs of Massacre survivors and our families by narrowly focusing on “a housing equity proposal” instead.
While the Commission claims to address the legacy of racial violence that devastated Greenwood, we, who actually experienced the atrocity, are deeply disappointed and bewildered by the exclusionary process. We requested a role in the Commission and were ignored. Subsequently, our lead attorney, Damario Solomon-Simmons, a national reparations expert who has fought tirelessly for massacre survivors and descendants for over 20 years, was denied a seat last week without justification.
Damario Solomon-Simmons' denial letter from Tulsa’s "Beyond Apology Commission" (Information redacted).
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.
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. Without a doubt, reparative justice must include payment of the outstanding insurance claims denied when the City falsely labeled Greenwood's destruction a "riot” rather than what it was: an orchestrated massacre and pillaging of a Black families.
It is particularly disturbing that the purported reparations commission would do nothing for the families of massacre victims–including a World War I veteran and other Black people who bear the marks of burns and gunshot wounds–recently identified amid the City's excavation of mass graves.
The 2001 Tulsa Race Riot Commission established by the state of Oklahoma called for reparations and the restitution of unpaid insurance claims, yet those recommendations have been largely ignored for over two decades. This week, Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum once again dismissed the provision of financial reparations as too polarizing – which raises serious questions about the commission he's touting.
Watch the press conference on the DOJ's historic trip to Greenwood, where they collected evidence and interviewed survivors and descendants in the Tulsa Race Massacre probe.
We can't help but wonder if the City is biding its time in hope that, at 109 and 110, we will soon perish along with our demand for true reparations to be realized.
Had the City truly wanted to repair the harm caused by the Massacre, it would have ensured that survivors like us had seats at the table. Instead, we are left out of these discussions, just as we were denied our day in court when the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed our reparations lawsuit earlier this year.
We are ready for true dialogue when the City is ready to commit to genuine reparations for the Massacre, which must include financial compensation and full accountability for all wrongs committed. Until then, the City of Tulsa continues to avoid addressing the full extent of what it stole from us and the Black American families of Greenwood and what it means to make us whole.
Support the 1921 survivors and descendants in their fight for justice and reparations—sign our letter urging the DOJ to fully investigate the massacre.