Holding on for long overdue justice…
1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors…But HOW LONG Must they wait?
The recent announcement that the Oklahoma Supreme Court, in an 8–1 decision, had dismissed the lawsuit filed on behalf of the remaining victims and survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was devastating but not surprising. In 2020, when I first read about the lawsuit being filed, I was cautiously optimistic about the potential outcome. And in 2021, with widespread media coverage marking the Centennial remembrance of the racially motivated massacre, with President Joe Biden in attendance, my hope was invigorated. But the actual final outcome exerted a few days ago by the Oklahoma Supreme Court destroyed any remaining hope for long-delayed justice for the only two remaining victims. The announcement made me want to wrap my arms around these brave women and offer some semblance of empathy and compassion. And as I have been writing about for many years from personal and lived experience, (SEE: Stolen Land: Exposing America’s Historical Amnesia) this nation’s unceasing indifference to these horrendous racial atrocities is morally reprehensible. And just compensation for the victims enduring trauma and loss is long overdue. These ladies, Viola Ford Fletcher, age 110, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, age 109, are the two only known survivors. They were 7-year-old girls when they witnessed and survived the massacre that destroyed their community and many lives. Hundreds of Black Americans were murdered when a vicious White mob seized and destroyed their Greenwood neighborhood. But America’s historical amnesia is definitely a factor which set in long ago. It has infected generations, and it is highly contagious. The seeds of the very founding of this nation are rotten to the core, and no matter how the founders tried to white-wash their veiled purposes with elegant and scholarly words, the fact remains that they were powerful and influential White men who considered an entire race of Black people as less than human. And today, any attempts on our part at achieving justice for these crimes is undoubtedly weakened and frequently dismissed.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has often been quoted as having said: “…The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” –This is actually a partial quote from the final Sunday sermon he gave called, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” which took place on March 31, 1968, at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC. The direct quote from the transcript of the speech reads: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Ironically, these words were spoken by Dr. King just four days before he was assassinated. And, “moral universe” metaphor aside, the slow bending of “the long arm of justice” remains agonizing to contemplate. 56 years later, let us hope that his words still ring true and provide a glimmer of hope for Viola Ford Fletcher and Lessie Benningfield Randle.
