Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 & The reparations Question Revisited
February 22, 2005 5:47 PM 
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Otis Granville Clark is a wonder. At 102, the former butler of Joan Crawford - who served Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin - still drives, lives on his own and twice a week attends church in his home city of Tulsa, Oklahoma... Today his blue eyes have gone milky but they still sparkle, his wiry frame remains agile, and his most painful memories are still fresh - even after 83 years. Coiled on the edge of an understuffed sofa, Clark leans back and screws his eyes tight to summon up "that day". It remains the most vivid of his life... Historians call the firestorm that convulsed Tulsa from the evening of May 31 into the afternoon of June 1 the single worst event in the history of American race relations. To most Tulsans it is simply "the riot". But the carnage had nothing in common with the mass protests of Chicago, Detroit and Newark in the 1960s or the urban violence that laid siege to Los Angeles in 1992 after the white police officers who assaulted Rodney King were acquitted. The 1921 Tulsa race riot owes its name to an older American tradition, to the days when white mobs, with the consent of local authorities, dared to rid themselves of their black neighbours. The endeavour was an opportunity "to run the Negro out of Tulsa". Burnt Offerings .See also The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 or the tale of the lost city or another The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. See also Frequently Asked Questions from the Tulsa Reparations Coalition. Previous post by
allaboutgeorge re: Tulsa Race Riot Reparations on March 1, 2001 .
posted by y2karl (172 comments total)
Neither the state nor the city has ever issued a formal apology and no one has received any compensation, despite the fact that survivors' stories have now been recorded in half a dozen documentaries, at least eight books, three national TV news shows, two textbooks, one romance novel, a musical and a movie for cable- TV.
And that was before the lawyers arrived.
On February 24 2003, 19 attorneys led by Charles J. Ogletree, a Harvard law professor and one of the country's most eminent black lawyers, filed suit in the US Federal District Court in Tulsa on behalf of the 123 riot survivors and 272 descendants. Ogletree had assembled a pro bono legal dream team, including Johnnie Cochrane, triumphant defender of O.J. Simpson, and Michael Hausfeld, a Washington D.C. lawyer who helped to win a number of Holocaust cases, including a $5bn settlement for victims of Nazi slave labour.
Before the legal action began, a few white civic leaders in Tulsa had spoken with regret about the riot and ONEOK's John Gaberino had recruited private donors to give $5,000 to each survivor, a move that collapsed once the lawsuit began.
"We had the money," he says, "But it's kinda hard to give money to folks when they're suing you." In lieu of direct payments, the state legislature in 2001 responded to mounting political pressure and awarded the survivors medals - gold-plated medallions inscribed with the state seal. Private donors covered the cost. Gaberino now leads a funding drive for a memorial museum, a variation of the memorial called for in the 2001 riot commission report. But the city has not budged on giving financial relief. The lawsuit has strengthened such sentiment, even though, so far, it has proven a poor test case.
Ogletree and company have lost at every stage. In March 2004, US Senior District Judge James Ellison dismissed the case, arguing that the statute of limitations had run. The plaintiffs filed an appeal with the US Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the dismissal was affirmed. Plaintiffs are to file a petition with the US Supreme Court on March 14. Ogletree remains optimistic, and the times may be on the side of the riot victims.
posted by y2karl at 6:02 PM on February 22, 2005