#lessie benningfield randle

[whenweallvote]

"I have lived through the massacre every day. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot." – Viola “Mother” Fletcher, oldest known survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

We will never forget this history, Mother Fletcher. On its 103rd anniversary, we honor the lives of the Tulsa Race Massacre victims and the legacy of The Greenwood District — a community that exemplified the power of Black excellence, Black success, and Black freedom.

[thechanelmuse]

"Mother" Lessie Benningfield Randle

One of the two last living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, celebrated her 110th bornday on Nov. 10, 2024. ❤️

Beloved elders, Lessie and Viola Fletcher (also 110), are still fighting for reparations for government-sanctioned domestic terrorism. God willing someone will peep the play and let go of their time-wasting attorney who filed their case for this massacre under that ridiculous "public nuisance" framework. Twice. Dismissed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court and a lower court because it's the wrong claim. No shocker there. A public nuisance framework is not reparations and it's disrespectful to the history, victims, and survivors.

God willing they will get everything that's owed and more with a competent attorney who files the correct paperwork while they're still here with us.

[alwaysbewoke]

all the talk about "black ppl today don't deserve reparations because they weren't around during slavery and they were slaves" was always a lie. a distraction. high key bullshit. here are literal massacre survivors of a white racial hatred demanding reparations and they still get nothing. white people are the epitome of aint-shit. literal cancers of the earth.

[tani-b-art]

We were told that reparations can’t be paid to us as descendants because we were never slaves ourselves.

We were told that reparations can’t be paid to us because no one is no longer alive that actually endured the enslavement.

We were told that reparations can’t be paid to us because those who enslaved is no longer alive.

Yet there are two of the last three remaining Tulsa Massacre survivors who yet again were denied reparations.

I need the judges and whoever to stop being cowards and just say it. We will not give reparations to you because you are Black American. The only deciding factor is they are Black American. [because reparative financial justice has been given out to several other groups who endured incomparable atrocities—can look up pension plan payouts for Civil War descendants, Japanese-Americans, Oklahoma City bombing survivors, Native Americans, Holocaust survivors and their families; some atrocities we as a country didn’t commit against others etc.]

And so what that it was an act of domestic terrorism with the enlistment of city, state and federal officials to participate in the slaughter (city officials equipped civilians with guns to murder), imprisonment and destruction of the residents and entire thriving community (enlisting pilots to drop bombs from airplanes). So what that there were internment camps setup following the atrocity. So what that the insurance companies rejected to honor and denied all the business and personal claims to repair the physical damage to properties to rebuild.

So what that there are survivors at 100+ years of age still alive today with firsthand accounts to testify of their traumatic experience. They dismissed the lawsuit and appeal from each survivor…again.

[filosofablogger]

... And Then There Were Only Two

I don’t know how I missed this story nearly two weeks ago, but it flew onto my radar this morning and I have to take a few moments to talk about a man named Hughes Van Ellis who died on Monday, October 9th.  The man was one of just three remaining survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which I have written about in years past.  According to the Jon S. Randall Peace Page … He died a few days ago,…

[afriblaq]

joyannreid

And yet they will do nothing about it… . Repost from @democracynow • The Justice Department has concluded the 1921 Tulsa race massacre was a “coordinated, military-style attack” as the agency released the findings of its investigation, announced last fall. On May 31 and June 1, 1921, white rioters murdered an estimated 300 Black residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood neighborhood, known as Black Wall Street, and looted and destroyed their homes and businesses. The report also states there are no living perpetrators for the Justice Department to prosecute. The last two remaining survivors of the Tulsa race massacre, Viola Fletcher and Lessie Benningfield Randle — both 110 years old — have been seeking justice and reparations for years. Last year, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed their case.

[uvmagazine]

An Oklahoma judge has dismissed the reparations lawsuit filed by the last three known survivors of the Tulsa race massacre on Friday, court records show.

The three had sued the City of Tulsa, other groups, and officials over the opportunities taken from them when the city’s Greenwood neighborhood was burned to the ground in 1921.

Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108, Viola Fletcher, 109, and her brother, Hughes Van Ellis, 102, were among the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs maintaned that the damage inflicted during the massacre was a “public nuisance” from the start and were seeking relief from that nuisance as well as to “recover for unjust enrichment” others have gained from the “exploitation of the massacre.

The family attorneys are expected to address the possibility of an appeal.

Read more :

-----

#Tulsa #TulsaRaceMassacre #TulsaRaceRiots #reparations #lawsuit #unheardvoicesmag

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Adria B. Walker at The Guardian:

On Friday, the Department of Justice (DoJ) released its report on the Tulsa race massacre after announcing the review last September. The report came more than 100 years after a June 1921 report by the justice department’s Bureau of Investigation, a precursor to the FBI, blamed the massacre on Black men and alleged that perpetrators did not violate any federal laws.

The Friday DoJ report, however, acknowledged that the attack by white citizens on Black residents “was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence”. “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,” Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general of the DoJ’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings, and locked the survivors in internment camps.” “Until this day, the justice department has not spoken publicly about this race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa. This report breaks that silence by rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation’s past. This report lays bare new information and shows that the massacre was the result not of uncontrolled mob violence, but of a coordinated, military-style attack on Greenwood.”

The 126-page report was conducted by a team of lawyers and investigators from the Emmett Till Cold Case Unit of the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division who “spoke with survivors and with descendants of survivors, examined firsthand accounts of the massacre given by individuals who are now deceased, studied primary source materials, spoke to scholars of the massacre and reviewed legal pleadings, books, and scholarly articles relating to the massacre”, according to the department. Despite the report’s findings, Clarke noted that “there is no living perpetrator for the justice department to prosecute”. Last June, the Oklahoma supreme court threw out a lawsuit brought by Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, two Tulsa race massacre survivors, that sought to make the city of Tulsa pay restitution to survivors and their descendants. Randle and Fletcher, who are both 110, were children at the time of the massacre.

The DOJ released its report on the Tulsa Race Massacre over 100 years after its initial 1921 report that wrongly blamed the Greenwood Village massacre on Black men and that the preparators didn’t violate any laws.

The recent DOJ report acknowledged a reality that can’t be refuted: the attack on the town’s Black residents “was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence.”

See Also:

Pepperspectives: Un-censoring the past…

[ptseti]

TOP COURT RULES NO REPARATIONS FOR TULSA SURVIVORS

You don’t deserve reparations just because you survived a racist atrocity, even if it was facilitated by the authorities - that’s the message of Oklahoma’s top court.

On 12th June, it ruled against three people - all in their hundreds - who lived to tell the tale of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Viola Ford Fletcher (109), Lessie Benningfield Randle (110) and now-deceased Hughes Van Ellis (102) filed for compensation in 2020, but had their case thrown out by a lower court, which argued that “simply being connected to a historical event” confers no right to reparations.

And Oklahoma’s Supreme Court agrees - agrees that White-supremacist mobs rampaging with police help though your neighbourhood, killing your friends and neighbours, destroying their property and businesses and leaving some 10,000 of you homeless, is not a good reason to compensate the trauma you went through as a child.

Has America really moved forward in the last 103 years?

Reparations #Survivors #Racism #Atrocities #Tulsa #TulsaOklahoma #Destruction #TulsaMassacre #Trauma

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108; Viola Fletcher, 109; and Hughes Van Ellis, 102 are HEROES. No group has ever won justice from their oppressors without demanding it, loudly and consistently, and these three aren't done fighting.

more coverage

and more

and some background, for those of you unfamiliar with this event

ETA: Justice for Greenwood Foundation

[whenweallvote]

After the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision today, the last two survivors will likely not receive justice for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre where a mob killed hundreds, demolished nearly 200 businesses, and displaced roughly 10,000 Black people from their homes — destroying the once thriving Greenwood District.

For years, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Ford Fletcher have sought justice for all that they lost 103 years ago. The Oklahoma judicial system has once again failed to deliver it for them and the entire Greenwood District community, but the fight for justice continues.

[nando161mando]

Oklahoma Supreme Court dismisses lawsuit of last Tulsa Race Massacre survivors seeking reparations

The suit was an attempt to force the city of Tulsa and others to make recompense for the destruction of the once-thriving Black district by a white mob. In 1921 — on May 31 and June 1 — the white mob, including some people hastily deputized by authorities, looted and burned the district, which was referred to as Black Wall Street.

As many as 300 Black Tulsans were killed, and thousands of survivors were forced for a time into internment camps overseen by the National Guard. Burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that survive today of the more than 30-block historically Black district.

The two survivors of the attack, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, who are both now over 100 years old, sued in 2020 with the hope of seeing what their attorney called “justice in their lifetime.” A third plaintiff, Hughes Van Ellis, died last year at age 102.

...

The city and insurance companies never compensated victims for their losses, and the massacre ultimately resulted in racial and economic disparities that still exist today, the lawsuit argued. It sought a detailed accounting of the property and wealth lost or stolen in the massacre, the construction of a hospital in north Tulsa and the creation of a victims compensation fund, among other things.

[tani-b-art]

Mother Viola Fletcher, Mother Lessie Benningfield Randle remain the last survivors of the Tulsa Massacre and are still fighting to be compensated.

[thechanelmuse]

Hughes "Uncle Redd" Van Ellis (1921-2023) ❤️🕊

Mr. Hughes was a WWll combat veteran and one of the last three survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, in which jealous European-American mobs went into the thriving, economic, 35-block area of the Greenwood district created by Black Americans (survivors and descendants of American chattel slavery) in Tulsa, Oklahoma known as “Black Wall Street,” and looted, burned & bombed it to the ground and murdered Black Americans through government sanction.

Justice for the Tulsa Race Massacre survivors has been intentionally slow-moving for over a century now to insure injustice is given to those who survived it. Even to the point where people try to bury the history or give a revisionist lie of it being a race riot. But just as reparations for US chattel slavery (perpetual ownership passed on through birth as someone's property and form of capital through labor and body), the debt is still owed from the US government.

The stolen generational wealth from forced labor, the stolen wealth from the Freedmen's bank ($93 million today) amongst other things, the stolen land to this day, and the continued remnants of slavery (including, Jim Crow, ethnocide and genocide) that are government sanctioned in our homeland our ancestors built from scratch. The debt will always be owed until it's paid. A debt doesn't die.

Reparations are currently happening at a slow pace across a number of states and municipality levels as of now, but at the same time we have to fight against Pan-African and obstructionist Democrats to ensure it's lineage-based for Black Americans only, direct cash payments to remove any hiccups, and protective policies our ancestors should've always had and we should've inherited.

When you don't have protective policies on the books for the largest ethnic group who descends from America and strip/impede on their potential accumulation of wealth and assets to pass down to their families, what do their descendants inherit?👂🏽

Some survivors and the descendants of Black Wall Street tried to rebuild their district, but when you're stripped of your wealth and "urban renewal" starts intruding I-244 called "Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Expressway" 😒 into your land, you can imagine the results. Mr. Hughes inherited displacement and poverty, passed down poverty to his family, and died in poverty. Mama Viola Fletcher, 109 (who is the sister of Mr. Hughes pictured above) and Mama Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108, are the last two survivors and still in the fight. They, too, live in poverty.

The passing of Mr. Hughes and our Black American ancestors will never go in vain as we continue to stand 10 toes down for them and us and see it through.

Rest easy, Uncle Redd (Jan. 11, 1921 - Oct. 9, 2023) ❤️🕊

This was his testimony before Congress in 2021:

[ausetkmt]

An Oklahoma judge dismissed the reparations lawsuit filed by the last three known survivors of the Tulsa race massacre on Friday, court records show.

The three had been locked in a yearslong court battle against the City of Tulsa and other groups and officials over the opportunities taken from them when the city’s Greenwood neighborhood was burned to the ground in 1921.

Contemporary reports of deaths began at 36, but historians now believe as many as 300 people may have died, according to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. Thousands were left homeless.

Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108, Viola Fletcher, 109, and her brother, Hughes Van Ellis, 102, were among the plaintiffs, CNN previously reported.

The plaintiffs had argued that the damage inflicted during the massacre was a “public nuisance” from the start and were seeking relief from that nuisance as well as to “recover for unjust enrichment” others have gained from the “exploitation of the massacre.

Cornell’s Legal Information Institute defines a public nuisance as when a person or entity “unreasonably interferes with a right that the general public shares in common.”

However, the City of Tulsa requested the lawsuit be dismissed with prejudice against refiling, arguing in part that “simply being connected to a historical event does not provide a person with unlimited rights to seek compensation from any project in any way related to that historical event.”

“If that were the case, every person connected to any historical event could make similar unjust enrichment claims against every museum or point of remembrance,” the city claimed.

Judge Caroline Wall on Friday found that “upon hearing the arguments of counsel and considering the briefs filed by counsel for plaintiffs and counsel for defendants” the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment petition “should and shall be” dismissed with prejudice, court records show.

Ike Howard, grandson of Viola Fletcher, said he was angry about the ruling,

“They were blighted and once again not made whole,” Howard said.

“We still remain blighted. We wish the D.O.J would investigate. … How can we get justice in the same city that created the nuisance? Is justice only for the rich?”

Family attorneys are expected to address the possibility of an appeal. Family members for Randle could not immediately be contacted.

Ed Mitzen, who made a private $1 million donation to the three survivors, told CNN on Saturday, “The Oklahoma State government should be ashamed of itself for not doing right by these three wonderful people, one of whom fought for this country in World War II.”

Fletcher was 7 years old when a violent White mob targeted Black residents and destroyed her community’s thriving Black economic hub.

“My life was taken from me,” Van Ellis previously said as he reflected on his family fleeing Greenwood when he was only a few months old.

He previously told CNN his family and other survivors left their homes and opportunities behind.

“I lost 102 years. I don’t want nobody else to lose that,” Van Ellis said.

Before Tulsa, this Georgia county forced out nearly all Black residents

[frankendykes-monster]

The last three known survivors of the infamous 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre announced on Monday that they plan to appeal last week's ruling by an Oklahoma judge dismissing their lawsuit seeking reparations for the deadly event. On the night of May 31 and June 1 of that year, a mob of white people attacked Tulsa's Greenwood district, an exceptionally affluent Black neighborhood sometimes known as "Black Wall Street," killing more than 300 people and burning down hundreds of Black-owned homes and businesses. No one was ever held criminally liable, and survivors were never compensated for their losses.

"But we will not go quietly. We will continue to fight until our last breaths," the three survivors — Viola Fletcher, 109, Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108, and Hughes Van Ellis, 102 — said in a statement. Their lawsuit hoped to seek reparations for the long-term effects of the event. But Judge Caroline Wall dismissed the 2020 lawsuit "with prejudice" on Friday, meaning that the ruling is a final and permanent dismissal, and the case cannot be refiled. "We were forced to plead this case beyond what is required under Oklahoma standards, which is certainly a familiar circumstance when Black Americans ask the American legal system to work for them," the survivors said in their statement. "And now, Judge Wall has condemned us to languish on Oklahoma's appellate docket."