Judge will decide merits

Lawyers for the three remaining survivors and some descendants of the 1921 Tulsa race riot/massacre have filed a lawsuit in September asking for an enormous payment of damages for the 100-year-old event.

Defense attorneys filed a motion to dismiss and it will be up to a Tulsa County District Court judge to decide if the case has merit.

McKenzie Haynes, a lawyer with New York-based Schulte, Roth & Zabel, said the suit wants a new hospital in North Tulsa, college scholarships and for black residents of North Tulsa to be exempt from state and local taxes.

The defendants are the City of Tulsa, Tulsa Regional Chamber, Tulsa Development Authority, Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, Tulsa County Board of Commissioners, Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office and Oklahoma Military Department.

City officials don’t comment on pending litigation.

Tulsa has invested tens of millions of public dollars in Downtown Tulsa and the Greenwood area in the past 100 years.  Tulsa taxpayers paid for $5.3 million upgrade to the Greenwood Cultural Center, the Greenwood Art Project, Oasis Fresh Market grocery store and the Aero Rapid Transit bus route.

Mayor G.T. Bynum is spending thousands of dollars in an effort to identity the graves of victims of that event.

Out-of-state groups supporting the lawsuit are pushing for reparations for not only the survivors and descendants of 1921 but for all black people in America because of the roots of slavery in America.

They want wealth redistribution so that blacks are on an equal footing with whites.

City councilors unanimously approved a resolution apologizing for the 1921 Tulsa Race riot/ massacre, a move that adds weight to the lawsuit. The councilors stopped short of calling for reparations. Mayor G.T. Bynum does not support cash reparations.

Bynum said he doesn’t know where cash reparations would come from. If it was from the city’s sinking fund, which is funded by property taxes, he said you would be penalizing current citizens for crimes they didn’t commit by others 100 years ago.

There are efforts to raise private funds for the survivors.

“It is not a reparations proposal. It’s about equity,” Council Chairwoman Vanessa Hall-Harper said. “The resolution is solely a vehicle to create infrastructures for good policies that will benefit Tulsa citizens who are and have been the most adversely affected from long-term systemic racism.”

The councilors approved a resolution that calls the event the  “single worst incident of racial violence in American history.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, long-time national figure, called for the council to create a “community bank” for black residents.