Attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons made history in 2020 for suing the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, its surrounding county, and military, for long overdue reparations surrounding the infamous 1921 Tulsa Massacre. The center of the massacre, the Greenwood District, was popularly known as “Black Wall Street” due to the residents who built a bustling chain of Black commerce and community while remaining within Tulsa city limits. Buoyed in large part by Black professionals participating in Tulsa’s booming oil economy, the district was home to grocery stores, clubs, movie theaters, and other amenities that made it feel largely self-sustaining.
In 1921, a mob of white residents, deputized by local officials, burned and looted the nearly 40 square blocks that defined Black Wall Street over the course of two days. Dozens of people died and hundreds more were hospitalized.
Despite overwhelming evidence, local officials continued to deny the massacre had taken place, even as thousands of residents struggled to secure basic needs like housing and food in the ashes of the state-sanctioned attacks. Experts say the assault resulted in more than $100 million in property damage alone.
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Solomon-Simmons’ lawsuit represented the three known survivors from this massacre, along with eight descendants. In 2023, a Tulsa county judge dismissed the claim, citing in part that too much time had passed. An appeal before the Oklahoma Supreme Court was similarly dismissed a year later. Despite the crushing 11-1 ruling, Solomon-Simmons maintains that Greenwood provides the best roadmap to reparations, in a country where—from Portland to Tulsa—Black neighborhoods have been pillaged through a mix of legal and illegal state terrorism. His new book, Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America, details how he connected with the survivors, the weight of fighting his case during the 2020 reckoning, and why he continues to advocate for communities that have experienced similar harms nationwide. Meanwhile, my essay Why It’s Finally Time for Oregon to Pay Reparations, published in the June 2026 Black Byline, explores similar threads, exposing the long tapestry of state-sanctioned Black dispossession in America.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
MERCURY: Can you talk about how local officials allowed the destruction of Greenwood, and the KKK’s role in that?
SOLOMON-SIMMONS: The Klan had targeted Tulsa and Oklahoma, in general, to get their membership up. And so the Klan was part and parcel involved in the massacre, because the Klan was part and parcel in the leadership of Tulsa. One of the things I make clear in the book—you have to control the narrative. [For example] one narrative we’ve had to fight against is using the term “mob.” This was white Tulsa. This was the police. This was the Chamber of Commerce. This was the rich oil man. This was the bankers. This was the insurance sales people. They were running the city.
Even after local officials unearthed the massacre, they called it a “riot.” It’s a misnomer, and a narrative battle we had to defeat, because you hear riot, and you think a spontaneous thing happened with these two groups. In reality, [the government] had planned to do something to the Greenwood community. They wanted land. They needed to find a way to get the land away from the Negroes, because the Negroes owned the best part of Tulsa. At the time, [the city] was the oil capital of the world. They were looking for how they could expand their industrial base.
You repeatedly refer to the folks who [committed the massacre] as terrorists. That’s correct, but that word is also a political decision.
The reality is, in this country, white people have been the main terrorists. America has created more terrorism around the world than anyone else in the modern era. And they certainly have done that to Black and Native folks.
The destruction of a Black community like Greenwood—a prosperous, organized, loving, peaceful, Black community—is not unique. That’s happened hundreds of times around this country. What makes Greenwood unique is the size, scope, and scale of the destruction. You have video, pictures, and hundreds of eyewitness accounts of the massacre. And you have living survivors as well.
Here in Portland, the city and our economic development agency colluded with Legacy Emmanuel Medical Center to remove hundreds of Black Portlanders for a hospital expansion plan. In response, the group Emmanuel Displaced Persons Association 2 brought a lawsuit against the city using a public nuisance claim—as you did—and was awarded a settlement of $8.5 million for 27 descendants. Can you talk about the public nuisance legal strategy, and any other successful examples you’ve seen?
I briefly consulted with the lawyers on that case in Portland, but didn’t know they reached a settlement. That’s great to hear. Public nuisance is a very powerful legal principle. The reason why it’s so powerful is because it doesn’t have a statute of limitations, if you can show that the nuisance is still ongoing. I believe very strongly, because of [our] lawsuit, they’ve narrowed the statute and scope. You remember the BP oil spill back in 2011? For three weeks they were trying to plug it. It was killing shrimp, birds were getting doused with oil, the air was bad. That’s very clearly a public nuisance, right?
Then they plugged it, and everybody was like, “This is great.” However, the oil that escaped was still causing pollution. It was still killing wildlife, destroying people’s fishing livelihoods. That’s the ongoing harm of a public nuisance. It doesn’t matter if it took one year or 100 years. The triggered harm is over with, but now you’ve got the continuing harm of the oil. The courts—which are very conservative places that are built to protect the wealthy and the powerful—they have been consistently, across the nation, targeting and reducing the power of public nuisance claims, but there still are some very good claims to bring.
There’s one Greenwood survivor that’s still with us—she’s 111. Talk about the challenges of trying to advance reparations claims with more people aging out of direct harm.
This is why I say that Tulsa is the best case scenario for reparations. All of the bad faith arguments against reparations–we defeat them on their face.
“We don’t know who did this.” The city of Tulsa did it, the chamber did it. The county did it.
“Who suffered the harm?” The survivors and descendants.
”How are we gonna pay?” Well, you pay like any other lawsuit. In Tulsa they have what they call a “sinking fund,” where they put money away for lawsuits.
Someone like Mother Randall—the lone living survivor, who turned 112 on November 10th—has a greater claim than anybody else. But the children and the grandchildren of those individuals who were killed during the massacre, who have never seen any compensation—their claim is still good. The people who had outstanding insurance claims, we know their names and what their insurance claim stated. We know with specificity what they lost.
Like, we know they are putting in a claim… not just for the house, but for their bedding, medical books, paintings, pianos, jackets. It’s not a guess. Reparations are a payment of a debt owed. And because you have waited so long to pay, there has to be additional interest. [The government] can always find the money for everything else. I don’t know about Portland, but around the country, when different NBA or NFL teams get a new stadium… somehow, the city and the state always finds hundreds of millions of dollars.
We are going through this at this exact moment. The state found $600 million for a stadium in a neighborhood from where Black people have been systemically displaced.
You see things, like, hundreds of millions of dollars for stadiums are being given to billionaires, so they can make more billions of dollars. Then they want to tell you, “this is great, because it’s going to create jobs.” It’s gonna create a bunch of $10, $15, and $20 per hour manual labor jobs.
What is the number one thing you want for people to take away from this work that you’ve been doing in pursuit of justice in Tulsa?
One, I want people to realize that Greenwood is so much more than just the massacre. The massacre happened 105 years ago, but Greenwood was founded 120 years ago this year. So we want to focus on the holistic nature of our people and our communities, and not just the violence and negativity that we’ve had to endure.
Two, Greenwood is an example for all Black communities across this nation; that—when given the opportunity, and left to our own devices—we’re able to build, sustain, and love ourselves.
Third, I want people to join this movement with me. Go to redeemination.com, and support my organization, Justice for Greenwood, so we can continue this work… not just here in Tulsa, but for descendants all over this nation. Like I said, I’m so excited to hear that the lawsuit in Portland went well, because that was inspired by our work here in Tulsa. And so Tulsa has always been an inspiration for Black people throughout this nation.
Redeem a Nation is available in all places where books are sold, but if you’re in Portland, The Black Byline encourages you to buy from the city’s largest Black-owned bookstore Third Eye Books.
