“I STILL see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams.” Nearly 100 years after the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, the oldest survivor of the attack by a White mob riveted a congressional committee with her memories of that terrible day. “I have lived through the massacre every day,” said Viola Ford Fletcher, 7 at the time of the attack and now 107. “Our country may forget this history, but I cannot.”

After she and the two other known survivors of the massacre testified Wednesday, each were given standing ovations by the members of a House Judiciary subcommittee. More than applause is needed. There must be some measure of justice and financial recompense for the survivors and descendants of what was one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history.

As many as 300 Black people were killed when a White mob descended upon Tulsa’s prosperous Black community of Greenwood. More than 1,200 homes were burned, 10,000 people were left homeless, and businesses, churches, schools and a hospital were destroyed. Survivors described turpentine bombs dropped from airplanes. “Decades of black prosperity and millions of dollars in hard-earned wealth were wiped out in hours, but nobody was ever held accountable and no compensation was ever paid,” said Dreisen Heath of Human Rights Watch, who authored a report calling on state and local authorities in Tulsa to provide reparations.

The three elderly witnesses who testified before Congress told of that toll in achingly personal terms. Ms. Fletcher recalled the beautiful home and neighborhood of her early years and how she had “a bright future.” When her family was forced to leave Tulsa, she lost her chance at an education, never finished school past fourth grade and never made much money. “To this day,” she said, “I can barely afford my everyday needs.” Her 100-year-old brother, Hughes Van Ellis, broke into tears as he told the subcommittee how he fought for the United States overseas during World War II but had not received justice in his own country. “My opportunities were taken from me and my community,” said Lessie Benningfield Randle, 106, relating how Black Tulsa is “still messed up today. They didn’t rebuild it. It’s empty. It’s a ghetto.”

The survivors are looking to Congress for action because, they say, Tulsa and Oklahoma have done nothing to try to make amends. For nearly 100 years, said Ms. Heath, the city and state “watched survivors die one by one while denying their culpability and resisting paying reparations recommended by the state legislature.” According to the survivors, the centennial of the massacre has been turned into a tourist attraction that has raised millions of dollars by exploiting their pain.

“It seems that justice in America,” Ms. Randle told lawmakers, “is always so slow, or not possible for Black people. And we are made to feel crazy just for asking for things to be made right.” They are not the crazy ones, and it’s long past time to try to make some things right. Congress should enact legislation that would allow victims to pursue legal claims against Tulsa and Oklahoma in federal court.

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