Human Rights Watch argued that beyond the physical destruction, the state and city government created polices of structural racism that kept black people in Tulsa from prospering.
“Generations of black Tulsans, especially massacre survivors and their descendants, have endured cumulative economic and moral losses and an inescapable cycle of pain,” said Dreisen Heath, the U.S. program advocacy officer at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.
“Reparations are the right thing to do, and the city of Tulsa and state of Oklahoma have the power to repair a century of harm.”
In 2001, the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, which was charged by the state with finding out what happened during the massacre, recommended reparations for massacre survivors and descendants, but city officials ignored the commission’s recommendations.
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed without comment a lawsuit against Tulsa, its police department and the state of Oklahoma, demanding reparations.
