Recently, a commission funded by the Oklahoma legislature investigated the riot. Its purpose was to “excavate a history that had been consigned to oblivion for the past 75 years,” according to the distinguished historian John Hope Franklin.
The commission recommended paying reparations to survivors. It looked to precedents like the Civil Rights Acts of 1988, which paid $20,000 to Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II. It also cited the settlement of claims of Holocaust survivors from Swiss banks, which had retained some money deposited before the war by the survivors’ families, and the $2 million set aside by the Florida legislature for survivors of the 1923 attack on Rosewood, a black town burned during a week of rioting. There are other precedents. Families of victims of the East St. Louis riot of 1917 received more than $400,000 in 1921 to compensate them for losses.
Some Oklahomans say they should not be taxed for the sins of their parents and that current taxpayers did not commit the crimes that destroyed Greenwood. But successors often pay for their predecessors’ actions. Many of the current stockholders of the Mobil Oil Company, which recently was held liable for polluting the water of Cyril, Oklahoma, were not alive in 1947 when the first pollution began. But they have to pay the cleanup costs nevertheless. Just because taxpayers did not themselves participate in the riot does not mean the city is freed from legal or moral responsibility. But reconciliation is best if it comes from the heart, not a lawsuit.
Reconciliation might be achieved if the city and state together give $20,000 to each of the 100 or so survivors—the sum given to Japanese Americans interned during World War II by the Civil Rights Act of 1988, signed by former president Ronald Reagan. Such a plan would cost about $2 million.
The case for reparations in Tulsa is particularly strong because of the deputies’ responsibility for much of the riot’s destruction. As the Oklahoma Supreme Court acknowledged in a long-forgotten insurance case, after the Greenwood residents were arrested, some of the deputies set fire to their houses. The well-orchestrated attack left more than 30 blocks destroyed and perhaps as many as 175 dead.
As they decide what to do, Oklahomans are in good company. International discussion over apologies and reparations spans slavery and Native American land in the United States, apartheid in South Africa, Nazi slave labor and war crimes in places like China, Korea and the Balkans. Meanwhile, Tulsa and the Oklahoma legislature have the opportunity to restore something to the 100 survivors of the riot who are still alive.
Alfred L. Brophy is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of American Civilization at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.