As promised, I’m including a link to info about today’s lead story and the reforms the Detroit Police Department is now mandated to make under last week’s settlement agreement with Robert Williams.
In today’s DINT we covered the issuance of a $51 million grant to tech organizations in Tulsa, OK. One of the recipients, Black Tech Tulsa, referred to the Tulsa Race Riots and re-invigorating the neighborhood burned to the ground by a mob.
I’m revealing notes from my research of this topic. Check it out:
From My Notebook
We at DINT are giving this the side eye for one reason: One recipient group is positioning the funds as a way to reinvigorate Tulsa’s historic Greenwood district that was looted and burned by a mob of non-Black neighbors in 1921.
The U.S. government is making strides to reinvigorate Black Wall Street. True retribution hasn’t been achieved. Two survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre have yet to receive reparations of any kind from Oklahoma or the U.S. federal government. Why is that? Could it be that reparations in this case would be an admission of wrongdoing? If that’s why the Oklahoma Supreme Court denied reparations for the two elderly women, then it’s simply prolonging Oklahoma’s healing journey.
I heard of healing journeys from a Cree elder who wouldn’t be patronized by a reporter during a press briefing on reversing mistreatment of the indigenous people of Canada. Healing starts with apologizing. Apologizing starts with an admission. Admission takes introspection and self awareness. This is something people are afraid to do because of what they might see. After a lifetime of suppressing self-awareness, humility, and forgiveness which ‘leaders’ in government such as the justices seated on Oklahoma’s Supreme Court have yet to achieve.
Still, my hope is that Black Wall Street will become revitalized. Until Oklahoma admits wrongdoing in covering up the Tulsa Race Massacre, funding no matter how large it might be, won’t absolve them of making right what was clearly an act of hatred.
Why is justice so hard to get?
Why must we fight and fight and fight?
My belief is that it’s easier to write a check than to say ‘I’m sorry. What can I do to make this right?’
Here’s what the City of Tulsa had to say after it was absolved of wrongdoing by the Oklahoma Supreme Court:
The City of Tulsa, the defendant, provided the following statement to News 9:
“The City of Tulsa respects the court’s decision and affirms the significance of the work the City continues to do in the North Tulsa and Greenwood communities. Through economic development and policy projects, the 1921 Graves Investigation, and a renewed community vision for the Kirkpatrick Heights & Greenwood Master Plan, the City remains committed to working with residents and providing resources to support the North Tulsa and Greenwood communities.”
Source: What I’m Reading
—
Attorneys for Mother Randall and Mother Fletcher, survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre that took place from May 31 to June 1, 1921:
In 103 years since the Massacre, no court has held a trial addressing the Massacre and no individual or entity has been held accountable for it. As justice is delayed once again in the Oklahoma court system, we call upon the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation into the Massacre under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007.
(Source: News 9)
2001 - Findings of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission
The Tulsa Race Riot Commission estimates that the property costs in the Greenwood district was approximately $2 million in 1921 dollars or $16,752,600 in 1999 dollars. Nevertheless, there were no convictions for any of the violent acts against African-Americans or any insurance payments to African-American property owners who lost their homes or personal property as a result of the Tulsa Race Riot. Moreover, local officials attempted to block the rebuilding of the Greenwood community by amending the Tulsa building code to require the use of fire-proof material in rebuilding the area thereby making the costs prohibitively expensive;
2021
$2 million for construction of Greenwood Plaza, art and entertainment in North Tulsa
undisclosed portion of $772 million redevelopment program, some of which will go to Kirkpatrick Heights and Greenwood redevelopment
They [attorneys for Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher], contended the effects of the massacre continue to be felt today and that the city and others should be forced to compensate victims, replace buildings and return land to the Black community.
But Justice Dustin Rowe wrote that while the "plaintiffs' grievances are legitimate, they do not fall within the scope of our state's public nuisance statute," which was limited to problems involving criminal or property-based conflicts.
"The continuing blight alleged within the Greenwood community born out of the massacre implicates generational-societal inequities that can only be resolved by policymakers--not the courts," wrote Rowe, an appointee of Republican Governor Kevin Stitt.
Seven other justices joined Rowe's opinion, while a ninth, Justice James Edmondson, partially dissented.
[All nine justices are white; six are male and three are female.]
From the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling:
20 Today's holding is consistent with our recent public nuisance jurisprudence: expanding public nuisance liability to include lingering social inequities from historical tragedies and injustices runs the risk of creating a new "unlimited and unprincipled"13 form of liability wherein both State and non-State actors could be held liable for their predecessors' wrongdoing, in which current actors played no part. To hold otherwise would place Oklahoma courts in the unorthodox position of fashioning remedies for these claims or venturing into the realm of outright policymaking--both of which we decline to do. As we said in Johnson & Johnson, "[t]his Court defers the policy-making to the legislative and executive branches . . . ." Johnson & Johnson, ¶ 39, 449 P.3d at 731.
Though Defendants' promotion of the Massacre as a fundraising effort may be considered unconscionable by Plaintiffs, neither law nor equity prevent Defendants from promoting the Massacre for historical purposes and community improvement. City of Tulsa, ¶ 19, 280 P.3d at 319. As unconscionable as the Massacre was, it is now part of our state's history, and is even codified as a Legislative finding in statute. 74 O.S. § 8000.1. Absent an allegation claiming that Defendants are falsely or fraudulently promising donors that Plaintiffs will share in or benefit from the proceeds of their fundraising efforts, Defendants' conduct itself is not legally unconscionable. Easterling, ¶ 10, 651 P.2d at 680.
City of Tulsa and how it benefited and exacerbated the Tulsa Race Massacre
Specifically, in relation to their abatement request, Plaintiffs pleaded as follows:
4. Following the Massacre, Defendants exacerbated the damage and suffering of the Greenwood residents. Defendants unlawfully detained thousands of Greenwood survivors and enacted unconstitutional laws that deprived Greenwood residents of the reasonable use of their property. From the period immediately after the Massacre until the present day, Defendants actively and unreasonably, unwarrantedly, and/or unlawfully thwarted the community's efforts to rebuild, neglecting the Greenwood and, predominately Black, North Tulsa communities.
Instead, Defendants redirected public resources, which should have been used to abate the nuisance surrounding Greenwood, to benefit the overwhelmingly White parts of Tulsa. As a direct result, Plaintiffs and thousands of Black Greenwood and North Tulsa residents and their descendants have experienced and continue to experience insecurity in their lives and property and their sense of comfort, health, and safety has been destroyed. Plaintiffs therefore seek to abate this public nuisance that has continued to plague Tulsa's Black community for over one hundred years.
. . . .
148. The public nuisance, as described above, is continuing, and has resulted in an obstruction of public rights, including, but not limited to, the right not to be placed in harm's way by Defendants' affirmative actions, the right to security in health, the right to access public roads and thoroughfares, and the right to enjoy reasonable use of property as guaranteed under the Oklahoma Constitution.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court’s response
18 Plaintiffs seek abatement to remedy "the blight to property caused by Defendant-Appellees that began with the Massacre and persists to this day."10 Plaintiffs do not plead any current physical injury to property or allege that any property is currently uninhabitable.11 Rather, Plaintiffs' public nuisance claim is predicated upon "the blight to property caused by Defendant-Appellees that began with the Massacre and persists to this day."12
¶19 Accepting as true that the Massacre is a continuing blight within all property in the Greenwood community--and that the pall of the Massacre continues to envelop the Greenwood community over one-hundred years later--Plaintiffs' claim does not present a conflict resolvable by way of abatement. And even accepting as true Plaintiffs' claim that the lingering economic and social consequences of the Massacre still, to some extent, endanger the comfort and repose of the Greenwood and North Tulsa communities, those lingering consequences over one-hundred years later, standing alone, do not constitute a public nuisance, as that term has been construed by this Court. The continuing blight alleged within the Greenwood community born out of the Massacre implicates generational-societal inequities that can only be resolved by policymakers--not the courts.
21 Today we hold that relief is not possible under any set of facts that could be established consistent with Plaintiffs' allegations. "When a trial court is considering [its] ruling on a § 2012(B)(6) motion [it] should not ask whether the petition points to an appropriate statute or legal theory, but whether relief is possible under any set of facts that could be established consistent with the allegations." Ind. Nat'l Bank, 1994 OK 98, ¶ 4, 880 P.2d at 375-76. Plaintiffs' grievance with the social and economic inequities created by the Tulsa Race Massacre is legitimate and worthy of merit. However, the law does not permit us to extend the scope of our public nuisance doctrine beyond what the Legislature has authorized to afford Plaintiffs the justice they are seeking. Accordingly, we affirm the District Court's dismissal of the public nuisance claim.
Kane, C.J., Rowe, V.C.J., Kauger, Winchester, Combs, Gurich, Darby, and Kuehn, JJ., concur.
Edmondson, J., concurs in part; dissents in part.
[No data on what part Justice Edmondson concurs on and which part he dissents on.]
Link to Oklahoma Supreme Court’s Decision on Randle v. City of Tulsa.
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