US Justice Department launches first-ever federal review of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

The U.S. Department of Justice's Cold Case Unit has begun a "review and evaluation" of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

The announcement was made by Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who said the Justice Department will issue a report detailing its findings and conclusions.

DOJ's investigation into the Tulsa Race Massacre was launched under the authority of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which Congress passed to seek justice for long-ignored victims of racial violence. The law allows DOJ to investigate deadly civil rights crimes that occurred on or before Dec. 31, 1979.

"The immediate catalyst for the (Tulsa) riot was, as with Emmett Till’s murder, the claim that a Black youth had inappropriately engaged with a white woman," Clarke said Monday from Washington D.C. "The young man, Dick Rowland, was arrested. White men went to the jail to demand that he be released to face mob justice."

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A fight broke out after members of the Black community showed up to protect Rowland from being lynched. Once the violence began, it wouldn't end until the thriving Greenwood District was burned to the ground and an estimated nearly 300 people of Black Tulsans were dead in the streets, Oklahoma's Tulsa Race Massacre Commission concluded in 2001. The estimated number of deaths has never been verified, and it's one of many questions that remain unanswered.

According to the Tulsa Historical Society, Tulsa's white civil authorities deputized men and gave them firearms and ammunition before sending them into Greenwood. The Oklahoma National Guard participated in mass arrests of nearly everyone living in Greenwood.

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"After a full examination of the facts, when cases cannot be prosecuted, we will issue a full report on the crime. In the words of Ida B. Wells, one of this nation’s most staunch antilynching advocates, 'The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them,'" Clarke said. "We hope that official reports, which reflect the Justice Department’s exhaustive efforts to seek justice, at bare minimum, prevent these victims and the tragic ordeals they endured from being lost to history."

Clarke acknowledged two known survivors, Viola Fletcher ("Mother Fletcher") and Lessie Benningfield Randle ("Mother Randle"), and one victim who passed away late last year, Hughes Van Ellis, known as "Uncle Redd." Fletcher and Randle have "begged" the DOJ for years to launch its own federal investigation.

"We acknowledge descendants of the survivors, and the victims continue to bear the trauma of this act of racial terrorism. We have no expectation that there are living perpetrators who could be criminally prosecuted by us or by the state. Although a commission, historians, lawyers and others have conducted prior examinations of the Tulsa Massacre, we, the Justice Department, never have," she said.

Clarke asked that anyone with evidence or materials related to the massacre, that aren't already in a curated collection, to notify the Cold Case Division at Coldcase.Civilrights@usdoj.gov using the subject line "Tulsa Race Massacre."

This story was updated because an earlier version included an inaccuracy.