NO JUSTICE

Judge Tosses Reparations Case From Last Known Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors

Judge Caroline Wall sided with the city and dismissed the case with prejudice.

A reparations lawsuit filed by the three last known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre was tossed out in Oklahoma court on Friday, records show. Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108, Viola Fletcher, 109, and Hughes Van Ellis, 102, sought relief from the “ongoing public nuisance” of the damages from the white supremacist attack on Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, dubbed Black Wall Street. The plaintiffs called out how others have benefitted from the “exploitation of the massacre”—which killed up to 300 people, historians estimate—while they have yet to “recover for unjust enrichment.” The City of Tulsa requested the lawsuit be brushed away because “simply being connected to a historical event does not provide a person with unlimited rights to seek compensation,” CNN reported. Judge Caroline Wall sided with the city on Friday and dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. “My life was taken from me,” Van Ellis previously said, according to CNN. “I lost 102 years. I don’t want nobody else to lose that.”