By Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some law enforcement members participated in arson and murders that occurred during the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report released Friday.
The report, which was released in the final days of President Joe Biden’s administration, follows decades of advocacy efforts from massacre survivors, descendants and civil rights groups.
Efforts to rebuild the historic community have been underway for years but advocates have continued to seek justice — including reparations and an official federal review. The DOJ’s civil rights division launched the review and evaluation last September into the massacre, where white attackers killed as many as 300 people, mostly Black residents, living in Tulsa’s prosperous Greenwood neighborhood.
But despite the gravity of the findings, the DOJ said “no avenue of prosecution now exists for crimes that occurred,” citing the expiration of relevant statutes of limitations and the youngest potential defendants being more than 115 years old.
The report found law enforcement officers, both from the Tulsa Police and the National Guard, “disarmed Black residents, confiscated their weapons and detained many in makeshift camps under armed guard.”
“In addition, there are credible reports that at least some law enforcement officers did more than arrest and detain Black men; some participated in murder, arson and looting,” the report said.
It pointed to witness testimony accusing a police officer of “shoot[ing] down allegro[e]s as they showed up.”
That same officer, according to the report, also “captured” six Black men in Greenwood “roped them together in single file, and led them running behind his motorcycle to detention at Convention Hall.”
There is testimony from a white witness who reported seeing officers search Black men reportedly looking for weapons “only to steal money from them and shoot them if they protested,” the report stated.
Another witness recalled an officer bragging of personally killing four Black men, according to the report.
The Tulsa city mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘NEVER FORGET THIS TRAGIC CHAPTER’
The massacre began after a Black man was alleged to have grabbed a white woman by her arm in an elevator in a downtown commercial building, according to an account by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Police arrested the man who was alleged to have assaulted the woman, according to the Justice Department report, which said that a local newspaper sensationalized the story, prompting a mob of white Tulsans to gather outside the courthouse and demand a lynching.
A confrontation broke out outside a courthouse, where Black men from Greenwood and a white mob gathered, following the arrest, according to the Justice Department report. Violence erupted after someone fired a shot, it added.
“Local police deputized hundreds of white residents, many of whom had been advocating for a lynching and had been drinking,” the report said.
The department said law enforcement officers helped organize these special deputies and other white Tulsans into the forces that ultimately resulted in the ravage of the Greenwood community.
The report also said city officials failed to fulfill promises to help Greenwood rebuild and “put up obstacles to residential reconstruction, instead imposing “harsh new fire codes that priced residents out of the area” after they deemed the area better suited for industrial use.
“The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“We issue this report with recognition of the courageous survivors who continue to share their testimonies, acknowledgement of those who tragically lost their lives and appreciation for other impacted individuals and advocates who collectively push for us to never forget this tragic chapter of America’s history.”
(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Kat Stafford and Aurora Ellis)
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