The Justice Department’s conclusion follows an investigation of the 1921 atrocity in Oklahoma in which up to 300 Black residents were killed.
The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, in which a prosperous Black neighborhood in Oklahoma was destroyed and up to 300 people were killed, was not committed by an uncontrolled mob but was the result of “a coordinated, military-style attack” by white citizens, the Justice Department said in a report released Friday.
The report, stemming from an investigation announced in September, is the first time that the federal government has given an official, comprehensive account of the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, in the Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood. Although it formally concluded that, more than a century later, no person alive could be prosecuted, it underscored the brutality of the atrocities committed.
“The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in a statement. “In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings and locked the survivors in internment camps.”
No one today could be held criminally responsible, she said, “but the historical reckoning for the massacre continues.”
The report’s legal findings noted that if contemporary civil rights laws were in effect in 1921, federal prosecutors could have pursued hate crime charges against both public officials and private citizens.
Though considered one of the worst episodes of racial terror in U.S. history, the massacre was relatively unknown for decades: City officials buried the story, and few survivors talked about the massacre.
