OKLAHOMA CITY — After two years of pursuing justice for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Oklahoma courts, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request to reconsider its ruling to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the remaining two survivors.
Without comment, seven of the nine members of the court rejected the request to reconsider the ruling in June that dismissed the lawsuit. One Justice did not vote. Only one justice would have reheard the case.
The only remaining survivors of the massacre, which left at least 300 hundred Black people dead, are 110-year-old Viola Fletcher and 109-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The Tulsa Race Massacre is considered by historians as one the most violent and deadly attacks against Black people in U.S. history.
In July, the plaintiffs’ attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons asked the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the Tulsa Race Massacre under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows cold cases involving violent crimes against Black people that happened before 1970 to be reopened.
More on the Tulsa Race Massacre and lawsuit in Oklahoma.
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