The U.S. Department of Justice Issues Its 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Report, and I Have Some Thoughts
The Department of Justice report brings disturbing new facts to light.
Over the weekend of January 10, 2025, days after the fourth anniversary of the Trump-inspired January Sixth insurrection, the U.S. Department of Justice released the first formal, comprehensive report of the events of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The conclusion is that it was a “calculated, military-style attack” — carried out with deadly precision and intent — that, paradoxically, relied on skills local men acquired during The Great War to liberate Europe from tyranny. My name is Anneliese Bruner, and I am the great granddaughter of journalist Mary Jones Parrish, who was widely cited in the report as an eyewitness to the massacre who reported on her experience and the experiences of other survivors. The biggest takeaway is that the DOJ does not see an avenue of prosecution for the well-documented crimes committed by the City of Tulsa and the State of Oklahoma, primarily because there are no living perpetrators. According to the report:
The events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, were horrific. If they happened today, the federal government would have authority to investigate all participants (those employed by the city and those who were private residents of Tulsa) and to charge anyone who committed or conspired to commit any of the offenses described above. But no federal hate crime laws existed then, and the existing civil rights laws were narrowly construed and rarely charged.
Federal prosecutors did not pursue charges in 1921 under the narrowly construed civil rights statutes that then existed. It may be that federal prosecutors considered filing charges and, after consideration, did not do so for reasons that would be understandable if we had a record of the decision. If the Department did not seriously consider such charges, then its failure to do so is disappointing, particularly in light of the local grand jury exonerating most white participants in the massacre, despite evidence that they had committed crimes. Because the statute of limitations on all federal offenses has expired and because of the death of perpetrators and the limitations imposed by the Confrontation Clause, federal prosecution is not possible in this instance.
The actions referred to on those pivotal dates concern an enraged, bloodthirsty white mob that descended on the Black section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to carry out a pogrom against the residents, loot their homes and businesses, and torch the neighborhood to the ground. The precipitating event was the false accusation that a young Black man, Dick Rowland, had assaulted a white teenager operating an elevator in the downtown Drexel Building. This accusation was enough to bring scores of white Tulsans to the courthouse where Rowland was held after being arrested. The crowd anticipated witnessing or even participating in the presumed lynching of the young man.
Black veterans of The Great War, and other defenders from Greenwood, armed themselves and marched, twice, to the courthouse to protect the lad. On their second foray, a shot was fired and a confrontation started. Ultimately, the white mob turned into an organized force of up to 10,000 individuals and, starting in earnest on the morning of June 1st, they carried out a military-level raid on Greenwood — against American civilians — that was unprecedented for the degree of coordination and ferocity in play. The Black protective force held off the invaders admirably but were eventually overwhelmed by superior numbers and firepower.
The DOJ report confirmed the atrocities that were committed against the men, women, children, and babies who were going about their everyday lives in Greenwood. The full-scale invasion was notable for conspiracy, organized terrorism, military might, and a coordinated cover-up that kept the truth hidden from broad public view for almost a century. However, it was the scale and scope of the brutal violence the report documented that was most shocking.
On a more personal level, I was struck by some of the agonizing details that were unearthed, especially those related to children and the elderly. Seventy-year-old Dr. A.C. Jackson, recognized as one of the country’s leading surgeons, was shot by a young white hoodlum as he exited his home with his hands raised in surrender. An elderly couple were on their knees praying when murderers shot them in the back of their heads. Children were yanked from their beds by mothers frantic to escape the inferno and gunfire.
Women fled with babies in their arms, leading crying children by the hand. Many had no time to dress; they ran shoeless, wearing only their night-clothes. Bullets were “falling like rain” as young children were “frantically trying to find their parents.” Women dragged their children along seeking safety, while “white rascals fir[ed] at them as they ran.
This excerpt from the DOJ report gripped me in a manner so personal that I have experienced moments of existential angst. From my own family history, Mary Jones Parrish writes:
I took my little girl by the hand and fled out of the west door on Greenwood. I did not take time to get a hat for myself or baby, but started out north on Greenwood, running amidst showers of bullets from the machine gun located in the granary and from men who were quickly surrounding our district. Seeing that they were fighting at a disadvantage our men had taken shelter on the buildings and in other places out of sight of the enemy. When Florence Mary and I ran into the street it was vacant for a block or more. Someone called to me to “Get out of the street with that child or you both will be killed.”
I felt that it was suicide to remain in the building, for it would surely be destroyed and death in the street was preferred, for we expected to be shot down at any moment, so we placed our trust in God, our Heavenly Father, who seeth and knoweth all things, and ran on out Greenwood.
Reading that passage, I know that my future existence hung in the balance in that moment on June 1, 1921 that my great grandmother so vividly described. One step in either direction, one moment’s delay, one wrong turn and little seven-year-old Florence Mary, my grandmother, could have been lost. It is sobering to peer into history at the very moment your individual fate is determined by your ancestors’ escape from machine gun fire from a weapon that a U.S. serviceman may have brought home as a souvenir from a war of liberation in Germany.
I was gratified to see that Mary Jones Parrish’s book, The Nation Must Awake: My Witness to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, was so heavily relied upon as a primary source for DOJ’s analysis. It has been a primary source in academia since she published it in 1923, but her name had been all but lost, much like the suppressed details that the DOJ report has confirmed and further legitimized. “Many of the matters reviewed … involve systemic racism, state-sanctioned brutality, and the failure of government institutions to protect victims of color.” Further, “There are allegations that some members of law enforcement participated in arsons and murder.”
I remain deeply dissatisfied that prosecution of those responsible is made impossible by the running of the statute of limitations, no relevant laws being on the books at the time, and barriers related to the Constitution’s Confrontation Cause. However, we remain undeterred in our quest for truth and justice because institutions named in the report — the Tulsa Police Department and the Oklahoma National Guard — still exist as entities with historical and moral responsibility for these depraved acts. A true reckoning is yet to be realized. — Anneliese M. Bruner
