Lawyers representing the Tulsa survivors announced the appeal in a news conference Monday in front of the Oklahoma Judicial Center in Oklahoma City, stating that the lower court wrongly dismissed the case last month.
“We stand on the shoulders of so many,” said Damario Solomon-Simmons, civil rights attorney and founder of the Justice for Greenwood Foundation. “The thousands that suffered the massacre and the hundreds that have been fighting for justice since that time,” he continued. Solomon-Simmons, who brought the lawsuit under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, said he wants the high court to return the case to the district level for discovery, and for a judge to decide the case on its merits.
Survivors Lessie E. Benningfield Randle, Hughes Van Ellis and Viola Fletcher — all of whom are over 100 years old — previouslylabeling the 1921 massacre as one of “the worst acts of domestic terrorism in United State history since slavery” and said the attack robbed thousands of Black residents of their self-determination, which continues to have harsh impacts on the community today.
Their suit, filed in 2020, sought reparations for the victims and descendants of the massacre, including an unnamed amount for punitive damages, a compensation fund, a scholarship program for descendants of those living in the Greenwood district at the time of the massacre, mental health and education programs for Greenwood residents.
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