Justice Department launches first federal review of 1921 Tulsa race massacre

By Jasper Ward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a review and evaluation of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said.

The massacre started on May 31, 1921, when white attackers killed as many as 300 people, most of them Black, in Tulsa’s prosperous Greenwood neighborhood, which had gained the nickname “Black Wall Street.”

In announcing the review on Monday, Clarke said the department aims to have it finalized by the end of the year.

“When we have finished our federal review, we will issue a report analyzing the massacre in light of both modern and then-existing civil rights law,” said Clarke, who oversees the Justice Department’s civil rights enforcement efforts.

The review will be conducted under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows the Department of Justice to investigate death-resulting civil rights crimes that occurred on or before Dec. 31, 1979.

The massacre started after a Black man was accused of assaulting a white woman.

“We have no expectation that there are living perpetrators who could be criminally prosecuted by us or by the state,” Clarke said. “Although a commission, historians, lawyers and others have conducted prior examinations of the Tulsa Massacre, we, the Justice Department, never have.”

Clarke said the department is examining available documents, witness accounts, scholarly and historical research and other information related to the massacre.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Bill Berkrot)