Tulsa race massacre survivor Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, made her first public appearance since the Oklahoma supreme court dismissed her historic lawsuit last month. Randle, along with fellow survivor Viola Fletcher, 110, had sought restitution for the survivors and descendants of the 1921 massacre, in which an estimated 300 Black Tulsans were killed, thousands were displaced, and Greenwood, the thriving district once known as “Black Wall Street”, was decimated in an act of racist violence.
A judgment in Randle and Fletcher’s favor would have been the first ruling to address the longstanding damage the massacre had on Tulsa’s Black community. But the court said that while the plaintiffs’ grievances were legitimate, the suit did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.
