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TULSA-GREENWOOD RACE RIOT CLAIMS

ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2007

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION,

CIVIL RIGHTS, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON

H.R. 1995

APRIL 24, 2007

Serial No. 110–19

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan, Chairman 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

CHRIS CANNON, Utah 

RIC KELLER, Florida 

DARRELL ISSA, California 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TOM FEENEY, Florida 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PERRY APELBAUM, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

JOSEPH GIBSON, Minority Chief Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

JERROLD NADLER, New York, Chairman 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan 

ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

DARRELL ISSA, California 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

DAVID LACHMANN, Chief of Staff 

PAUL B. TAYLOR, Minority Counsel 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

APRIL 24, 2007

TEXT OF BILL 

Page 

H.R. 1995, the ‘‘Tulsa-Greenwood Race Riot Claims Accountability Act of 

2007’’ ..................................................................................................................... 2

OPENING STATEMENT 

The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of New York, and Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil 

Rights, and Civil Liberties .................................................................................. 7

The Honorable Trent Franks, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Arizona, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil 

Rights, and Civil Liberties .................................................................................. 7

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Michigan, Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, and Member, 

Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties ............. 8

WITNESSES 

Mr. Alfred L. Brophy, Ph.D., Professor of Law, University of Alabama School 

of Law 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 12

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 14

Mr. John Hope Franklin, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology (Retired), Fordham 

University 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 24

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 26

Ms. Olivia Hooker, Ph.D., James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, 

Duke University School of Law 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 31

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 32

Mr. Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute 

for Race and Justice, Harvard Law School 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 33

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 35

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Steve Cohen, a Representative in Congress from the State of Tennessee, and Member, Subcommittee on the 

Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties .................................................. 10

APPENDIX 

Material Submitted for the Hearing Record .......................................................... 67

(1)

TULSA-GREENWOOD RACE RIOT CLAIMS 

ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2007

TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION,

CIVIL RIGHTS, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES, 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:12 a.m., in 

Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Jerrold 

Nadler (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Nadler, Wasserman Schultz, Ellison, 

Conyers, Scott, Watt, Cohen, Jackson Lee, Waters, Franks, Pence, 

and Issa. 

Staff present: Keenan Keller, Majority Counsel; David 

Lachmann, Majority Staff Director; Paul Taylor, Minority Counsel; 

and Susana Gutierrez, Professional Staff Member. 

Mr. NADLER. Good morning. This hearing of the Subcommittee 

on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties will come to 

order. 

I am pleased to welcome you today to this hearing of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties on 

the subject of the Tulsa-Greenwood Race Riot Accountability Act of 

2007, which was introduced yesterday by Chairman Conyers. 

[The bill, H.R. 1995, follows:]

2

1

I 

110TH CONGRESS 

1ST SESSION H. R. 1995

To provide a mechanism for a determination on the merits of the claims 

brought by survivors and descendants of the victims of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, Race Riot of 1921 but who were denied that determination. 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

APRIL 23, 2007

Mr. CONYERS (for himself and Mr. NADLER) introduced the following bill; 

which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary 

A BILL

To provide a mechanism for a determination on the merits 

of the claims brought by survivors and descendants of 

the victims of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, Race Riot of 1921 

but who were denied that determination.

1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 

3 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 

4 This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Tulsa-Greenwood Race 

5 Riot Claims Accountability Act of 2007’’. 

6 SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 

7 The Congress makes the following findings: 


HR1995.AAB
3

2

•HR 1995 IH

1 (1) In 1921, Greenwood (a community in 

2 Tulsa, Oklahoma) was one of the most prosperous 

3 African American communities in the United States. 

4 Serving over 8,000 residents, Greenwood’s commer5 cial district was known nationally as the ‘‘Negro 

6 Wall Street’’. The community boasted two news7 papers, over a dozen churches, and hundreds of Afri8 can American-owned businesses. 

9 (2) On the evening of May 31, 1921, the Afri10 can American Greenwood community of Tulsa, Okla11 homa, was ravaged by a white mob. By the conclu12 sion of the riot at midday, June 1, virtually every 

13 building in a 42-square-block area of the commu14 nity—homes, schools, churches, and businesses—was 

15 burned to the ground and thousands were left home16 less. Over 1,200 homes were destroyed. Every 

17 church, school, and business in Greenwood was set 

18 on fire. Approximately 8,000 African Americans 

19 were left homeless and penniless. Unable to rebuild, 

20 thousands of residents spent the winter of 1921-

21 1922 in tents. 

22 (3) Credible evidence supports the belief that 

23 up to 300 African Americans were killed during the 

24 riot. As many victims were buried in unmarked 

25 graves, an exact accounting is impossible. 


HR1995.AAC
4

3

•HR 1995 IH

1 (4) In the wake of the white mob destruction of 

2 the Greenwood District, a State-convened grand jury 

3 officially placed responsibility for the violence on the 

4 African-American community, exonerating whites of 

5 all responsibility. Neither the State nor the city un6 dertook any investigations or prosecutions, and doc7 uments relating to the riot vanished from State ar8 chives. Ultimately, no convictions were obtained for 

9 the incidents of murder, arson, or larceny connected 

10 with the riot. 

11 (5) None of the more than 100 contempora12 neously filed lawsuits by residents and property own13 ers in Greenwood were successful in recovering dam14 ages from insurance companies to assist in the re15 construction of the community. After the city at16 tempted to block their redevelopment efforts, victims 

17 were forced to rebuild with their own resources or 

18 abandon the community. 

19 (6) State and local governments suppressed or 

20 ignored issues and claims arising from the 1921 riot, 

21 effectively excising it from collective memory, until 

22 the Oklahoma Legislature created a commission to 

23 study the event in 1997. The commission’s February 

24 28, 2001, report uncovered new information and de25 tailed, for the first time, the extent of involvement 


HR1995.AAD
5

4

•HR 1995 IH

1 by the State and city government in prosecuting and 

2 erasing evidence of the riot (Okla. Stat. Tit. 74 Sec3 tion 8000.1 (West 2005)). 

4 (7) The documentation assembled by The 1921 

5 Tulsa Race Riot Commission provides strong evi6 dence that some local municipal and county officials 

7 failed to take actions to calm or contain the situa8 tion once violence erupted and, in some cases, be9 came participants in the subsequent violence, and 

10 even deputized and armed many Whites who were 

11 part of a mob that killed, looted, and burned down 

12 the Greenwood area. 

13 (8) Based on new information contained in the 

14 report, the Greenwood claimants filed suit, pursuant 

15 to the laws codifed in sections 1981, 1983, and 1985 

16 of title 42 of the United States Code and the 14th 

17 amendment, seeking damages for the injuries sus18 tained in the riot as a result of the government’s in19 volvement. Their claims were dismissed as time 

20 barred by the court, and so were not determined on 

21 the merits. 382 F.3d 1206 (10th Cir. 2004), rehrg 

22 en banc denied (with dissent), 391 F. 3d 1155 (10th 

23 Cir. 2004), cert denied Alexander v. State of Okla24 homa, 544 U.S. 1044 (2005). 


HR1995.AAE
6

5

•HR 1995 IH

1 SEC. 3. DETERMINATION ON MERITS FOR GREENWOOD 

2 CLAIMANTS. 

3 (a) IN GENERAL.—Any Greenwood claimant who has 

4 not previously obtained a determination on the merits of 

5 a Greenwood claim may, in a civil action commenced not 

6 later than 5 years after the date of the enactment of this 

7 Act, obtain that determination. 

8 (b) INTENT OF CONGRESS AS TO REMEDIAL NATURE

9 OF SECTION.—It is the intent of Congress that this sec10 tion be liberally construed so as to effectuate its remedial 

11 purpose of giving a full determination on the merits for 

12 each Greenwood claim denied that determination. 

13 (c) DEFINITIONS.—In this Act—

14 (1) the term ‘‘Greenwood claimant’’ means an 

15 individual who filed a discrimination complaint aris16 ing from conduct connected to the May 31, 1921, 

17 race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and 

18 (2) the term ‘‘Greenwood claim’’ means a com19 plaint filed in the Alexander v. State of Oklahoma 

20 litigation that was dismissed as time barred by the 

21 Federal court.

Æ


HR1995.AAF
7

Mr. NADLER. The Chair recognizes himself for 5 minutes for an 

opening statement. 

Today the Subcommittee meets to examine an old injustice for 

which our nation has failed to find a remedy. In 1921, in less than 

1 day, a 42-square block area of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Greenwood 

neighborhood, was attacked by a White mob and burned to the 

ground. Approximately 300 of its residents were murdered by the 

mob. What had been a thriving community was obliterated. 

A commission established by the state of Oklahoma issued a report in February of 2001, 6 years ago, detailing for the first time 

the extent of the city and State government’s involvement in the 

riot and in the cover-up that followed and the total lack of remedy 

available in the courts at that time. 

A civil rights suit based on these newly disclosed facts seeking 

compensation for the damages that occurred as a direct result of 

the government’s involvement was dismissed by a divided 10th Circuit on the grounds that the suit was time-barred. 

No one was ever convicted for this outrage. Racist courts were 

closed to the more than 100 lawsuits filed by Greenwood residents 

and property owners against insurance companies seeking payment 

on their policies. According to the commission, local officials attempted to block the rebuilding of the Greenwood community by 

amending the Tulsa building code. 

It is painful to realize that what can only be described as ethnic 

cleansing took place in our nation and that it has been virtually 

wiped from the history books. Thanks to the work of the 1921 

Tulsa Race Riot Commission, we have another chance to confront 

the past. 

Chairman Conyers introduced legislation yesterday to address 

this longstanding injustice. And I want to thank him for his efforts 

to bring this terrible history to the public’s attention and for his 

hard work in seeking to do a measure of justice. 

Nearly 90 years have passed since the Greenwood community 

was destroyed with the connivance of local officials. No one has 

been called to account for it. Very few of the survivors remain. We 

cannot undo the past, but we can seek to make amends to take responsibility on behalf of this nation for what happened and to do 

what we can for the survivors. 

For too many, justice delayed has been justice denied. This is a 

matter that can no longer wait. And the least we can do is to open 

our courts at this late date to them. 

We have a panel of very distinguished witnesses today, including 

one witness who will provide a very special perspective on the 

events of 1921. 

I look forward to hearing from all of you. And I want to welcome 

you to the Subcommittee. 

The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Franks, is recognized for 5 

minutes for his opening statement. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I thank the panelists for being here today. And I am looking 

forward to their testimony as well. 

Mr. Chairman, in ‘‘Federalist 51’’, James Madison wrote, ‘‘It is of 

great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against 

the oppression of its rulers, but also to guard one part of the sociVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:09 Jul 31, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CONST\042407\34924.000 HJUD1 PsN: 34924
8

ety against the injustice of the other part. If a majority be united 

by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.’’

Both of these issues are clearly illustrated here today. In Tulsa 

there was both a failure of law enforcement to protect an innocent 

minority and worse, an oppressive, unconstitutional disarming and 

then slaughtering of an innocent population that acted to protect 

its children and neighborhoods. 

People suffered and died, Mr. Chairman. And this was an inexcusable outrage and disgrace. The Tulsa Race Riots cuts against 

everything that America stands for, namely, a fundamental belief 

that all of the people are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, those of life, liberty and the 

pursuit of happiness. 

Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, most of the individuals who suffered in the Tulsa tragedy are no longer with us and did not live 

to witness their day in court, which the victims received more than 

a half a century after the fact. The courts found that the victims 

of the riot were terribly wronged. And finally the story of Greenwood is known. 

Though the courts have given closure in the public domain and 

recognition for the indignities suffered, the Federal courts have had 

to uniformly and unanimously dismiss the claims because they 

were time-barred. The plaintiffs had opportunity to bring claims 

against the State since at least the 1960’s but chose not to do so. 

Then in 2003, O.J. Simpson lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, brought 

claims for money damages in the case of Alexander v. Oklahoma. 

This case was resolved in 2005 by a unanimous 10th Circuit 

Court ruling finding that the claims were indeed time-barred. The 

Supreme Court declined to hear the case because the facts and the 

law are clear and the case is beyond the statute of limitations. 

It is important at this juncture to point out that the rights under 

our Constitution belong to individuals and not to groups. And nearly all the individuals who suffered in June 1921 are no longer alive. 

Nor are those who inflicted such injustice. 

Mr. Chairman, it seems that we are never quite so eloquent as 

we are when we decry the crimes of a past generation. And we are 

never so blind as when we ignore the injustice of the day in our 

own time. It is a tragedy that occurs when innocent human beings, 

children of God, are diminished as persons. It is a tragedy repeated 

time and again in the history of the human family. 

The greatest act of contrition we could ever offer to all of the victims of those tragedies is to instill anew in our own hearts once 

and for all a conviction that regardless of what other forces of expedience might exist, we as a society must resolve to treat every 

human being, Black or White, young or old, born or unborn, rich 

or poor, perfect or imperfect, weak or strong as the children of God 

that they are. May that be our greatest commitment at this hour 

as we remember the tragedy of the Tulsa riots. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I look forward to the testimony. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. 

I now yield 5 minutes to the distinguished Chairman of the full 

Committee, the gentleman from Michigan. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Chairman Nadler. 

9

And to Trent Franks of Arizona, the Ranking Member, I appreciate these opening statements because, to me, this is another piece 

of American history that is so important, that we come here today 

to remedy something that happened in 1921. 

I notice sitting in the Judiciary Committee hearing room Alderwoman Dorothy Tillman of Chicago, who has worked not only on 

reparations but on this matter, on the issues with the Black farmers and for justice in many ways all across the country. I am delighted that she and all of these survivors are here. And of course, 

our more regular witness, Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law School 

is again with us. We welcome his presence. 

Now, this is American history at its finest hour. What we are 

looking at are the reasons that sometimes the statute of limitations 

can be told. In the Japanese internment case that came before the 

Congress, in the Pigford Black farmers case that we tolled a statute of limitations. We mentioned Johnny Cochran, one of our legendary members of the bar here. 

And so, we come here with the full understanding in the Judiciary Committee that it is within the courts’ discretion to tow the 

statute of limitations based on common law principle and its balance test based on fairness and the need for finality. Some of the 

key equitable principles present here is not only was there evidence 

destroyed and that the city deliberately hid the evidence, but there 

is more than a suggestion that law enforcement operatives, including National Guard, participated in the riot itself. 

And then to have Dr. John Hope Franklin, whose father was an 

attorney in Tulsa, the busy community known as the ‘‘Negro Wall 

Street,’’ brings us all together in this room on this day to try to 

bring some finality to such an important issue. 

The case of the Tulsa-Greenwood Race Riot is worthy of congressional attention because substantial evidence suggests that governmental officials deputized and armed some of the mob and that the 

National Guard itself joined in the destruction. The report commissioned by the Oklahoma State Legislature in 1997 brought new evidence forward. 

And as a matter of fact, we have the State representative from 

Oklahoma who is present with us today sitting in the front row. 

And we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the 

great work that you did in bringing this forward. 

And so, with this new evidence crucial for the formulation of a 

substantial case, but its timeliness raised issues at law and resulted in a dismissal on statute of limitations ground in dismissing 

the survivors’ claim. However, the court found that the extraordinary circumstances might support extending the statute of limitations, but that Congress did not establish rules applicable to the 

case it barred. 

So with this legislation, we have the opportunity to provide closure for a group of claimants, all over 90 years old and some of 

them here today, and the ability to close the book on a tragic chapter in our history. So, I am very proud to join all of the Members 

of this Committee for the hearing that will now take place. 

Thank you very much, Chairman Nadler. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. 

10

In the interest of proceeding to our witnesses and mindful of our 

busy schedules, I would ask that other Members submit their 

statements for the record. Without objection, all Members will have 

5 legislative days to submit opening statements for inclusion in the 

record. 

Without objection, the Chair will be authorized to declare a recess of the hearing if necessary. 

As we ask questions of our witnesses, the Chair will recognize 

Members in the order of their seniority on the Subcommittee, alternating between majority and minority Members, providing that the 

Member is present when his or her turn arrives. Members who are 

not present when their turn begins will be recognized after the 

other Members have had the opportunity to ask their questions. 

The Chair reserves the right to accommodate a Member who is unavoidably late or who is only able to be with us for a short time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cohen follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE STEVE COHEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TENNESSEE, AND MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE

CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

Today’s hearing addresses yet another painful episode in our Nation’s long-tortured history of race relations. The Greenwood Race Riot of 1921 represents a particular low point in that history. During the riot, a white mob burned one of the 

most prominent and thriving African-American communities in the country to the 

ground, aided and abetted by the very government officials who were supposed to 

be protecting the innocent residents and property owners of that community. Looking to the courts for relief, Greenwood’s residents were denied justice—in the 1920’s 

because of rank racial prejudice and in the 2000’s because of a technical legal hurdle. The legislation that we discuss today—the ‘‘Tulsa-Greenwood Riot Accountability Act of 2007’’—provides at least the fair opportunity for the riot’s victims to 

obtain justice from the federal courts in light of new evidence that strongly suggests 

the culpability of government officials with respect to the riot. After eight and half 

decades in the shadows, the victims of the Greenwood Race Riot are entitled to their 

day in court.

Mr. NADLER. I would now like to welcome our distinguished 

panel of witnesses. 

Professor Alfred Brophy teaches at the University of Alabama 

School of Law. He has written extensively on race and property law 

in colonial, antebellum and early 20th century America. He served 

as a clerk to Judge John Butzner of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and has taught at Boston College Law 

School, Indiana University, the University of Hawaii and Vanderbilt University. He received his A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania, his Ph.D. from Harvard and his J.D. from Columbia University. 

John Hope Franklin is the James B. Duke Professor Meritus of 

History and was for 7 years a professor of Legal History in the Law 

School of Duke University. He is a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Fisk University. He received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard. He is one of this nation’s most distinguished historians of the 

African-American experience in the United States. I would go on to 

list his many acclaimed publications, awards, teaching posts and 

honorary degrees, but that would leave little time for our hearing. 

The Chair would note with satisfaction that, among his many 

achievements, Professor Franklin chaired the history department 

at Brooklyn College. And Brooklyn is part of my constituency. Most 

relevant for the Subcommittee, I must note that Professor FrankVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:09 Jul 31, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CONST\042407\34924.000 HJUD1 PsN: 34924
11

lin’s father was born in the Indian territory, grew up in Oklahoma 

and lived through the Tulsa Race Riot in 1921. He, himself, moved 

to Tulsa when he was 10 years old, just 4 years after the Tulsa 

riot, and witnessed firsthand the impact the riot had on Tulsa. 

Dr. Olivia Hooker is a survivor the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. She 

is here today as a witness to history. And we are both grateful and 

privileged that she has come all this way to describe for Congress 

exactly what happened. 

She was the first African-American woman to enlist and go on 

active duty in the Coast Guard in World War II. She is a graduate 

of Ohio State University. She has an M.A. from Columbia Teachers 

College and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. She taught 

at the graduate school of arts and sciences at Fordham University 

before retiring in 1985. 

Our final witness is no stranger to this Committee. Professor 

Charles Ogletree is the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard and is the executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston 

Institute for Race and Justice. Professor Ogletree earned his B.A. 

and M.A. from Stanford University and holds a J.D. from Harvard 

Law School. 

On behalf of the Subcommittee, I want to extend a warm welcome to all of you. 

Without objection, your written statements will be made part of 

the record in its entirety. I would ask each witness to summarize 

your testimony in 5 minutes or less. To help you stay within that 

time, there is a timing light at your table. When 1 minute remains, 

the light will switch from green to yellow, and then to red when 

the 5 minutes are up. 

I will begin by asking Professor Brophy——

Mr. OGLETREE. Chairman, before he speaks, can I have the privilege to introduce the survivors who are here who will not be testifying, if I could? 

Mr. NADLER. By all means. By all means. 

Mr. OGLETREE. Thank you very much. I am Charles Ogletree, the 

lead counsel for the survivors. 

And we have here today Mrs. Edie Fay Gates, who has chronicled the history of the survivors—if you would stand up, Mrs. 

Gates—in several books and is the one who helped keep this alive. 

And she was also on the Tulsa Race Riot Commission. 

We have Representative Donald Ross, who helped this legislation, was on that commission as well, who has come in from Oklahoma and has been an important mainstay. 

We have Dr. Otis Clarke, who is 104 years old, the oldest survivor here. He was 18 years old during the riot in 1921. He is here 

with his daughter and granddaughter, Gwen and Starr Williams. 

And he is our oldest surviving witness. 

We have Mr. Wess Young, a 91-year-old survival from Tulsa and 

his wife, Catherine Young, from Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

We have Agnieszka Fryszman, one of the lawyers who has been 

working with the survivors, from the Cohen Milstein firm here in 

Washington, D.C. 

We have Mr. Demarial Solomon Simmons, who is a young man 

from Tulsa whose grandparents were in Tulsa. And we would like 

to submit his testimony for the record. 

12

[The information referred to was not received by the Subcommittee prior to the printing of this hearing.] 

Mr. OGLETREE. We have Representative Jamar Shomate, who 

represents the district where many of these residents live now in 

Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

We have Suzette M. Malveaux, who is with the Cohen Milstein 

firm and helped us draft the original complaint. She is a professor 

here at Catholic University. 

And we also have Alderman Dorothy Tillman from Chicago, who 

has been down to Tulsa, who has been with the survivors here. 

And we have Reverend Granger Browning, who hosted the survivors here this past weekend at Ebenezer AME Church in Fort 

Washington, Maryland, along with Jonathan Newton, one of my 

former students and also a member of AME church. 

And I would also want to acknowledge the other lawyers: Dennis 

Sweet; Michele Roberts; Johnny Cochran, who you mentioned; Eric 

Miller; Raul Sanders; Leslie Mansfield; Jim Goodwin; and a few 

others; Reggie Turner, a classmate of mine who is documenting 

this history in a film called, ‘‘Before They Die.’’

Thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you, Professor. 

The Chair certainly wants to welcome the survivors and the 

chroniclers and all those who have worked on behalf of the survivors and to bring this injustice to light and to history and to judicial resolution. And I express my appreciation for all your efforts 

and for your being here today. 

And I thank you, Professor, for bringing this to our attention and 

for introducing them. And thank you all for that. 

And, Professor Brophy, you may now proceed with your testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF ALFRED L. BROPHY, Ph.D., PROFESSOR OF 

LAW, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA SCHOOL OF LAW 

Mr. BROPHY. Thank you, Representative Nadler, Representative 

Conyers, Ranking Member Franks, and Members of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. It 

is my pleasure and honor to speak on behalf of this legislation to 

repair the tragedy of the Tulsa riots of 1921. 

I am Al Brophy, professor of law at the University of Alabama 

and author of, among other works, ‘‘Reconstructing the Dreamland: 

The Tulsa Riots of 1921.’’

I think the most poignant photograph of the riot is this picture 

entitled, ‘‘Running the Negro out of Tulsa.’’ It is a postcard made 

up after the riot to commemorate the riot. And it captures, I think, 

the essence of it. It was the result of race hatred and a move to 

drive out Tulsa’s African-American population. It was about teaching Greenwood residents their place at the same time they were 

driven from their homes. 

I would like to emphasize several key aspects of the riot. 

First, the city is culpable. When the riot began, the police chief 

issued hundreds of commissions to men at the courthouse. They 

were instructed to get a gun and get a Black person or thereabouts. 

And they worked in conjunction with police officers and the local 

units of the National Guard to disarm every Black person in Tulsa 

13

and take them to what newspapers called concentration camps 

around the city. What followed then was those deputies, sometimes 

working in conjunction with police officers to loot and burn Greenwood. 

In the aftermath of the riot, Tulsa made concerted efforts to 

erase the city’s culpability. An all-White grand jury investigated 

the riot. And their conclusion was told in the headline of the Tulsa 

World: ‘‘Grand Jury Blames Negroes for Inciting Race Rioting. 

Whites Clearly Exonerated.’’ Or, as the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch commented, ‘‘There is a whitewash brush, and a big one, in 

operation in Tulsa.’’

Second, though some people knew and bravely sought to obtain 

some form of redress through the courts, race riot victims had no 

realistic shot at justice. For those riot victims, people who lived 

through the horror and brutality of the riot, Jim Crow has not yet 

ended. 

For everyone else, we may have said that Jim Crow ended in the 

1960’s when this Congress passed its comprehensive civil rights 

statutes. For those riot victims who were taught at an early age 

the assertion of legal rights leads to their destruction, I think it 

has not yet ended. 

And though we had something like 100 lawsuits filed at the time, 

they went nowhere. Things were going from worse for riot victims. 

In 1923, the governor of Oklahoma declared martial law throughout the State citing among other reasons the pervasive influence of 

the Klan in the Tulsa courts. As late as the 1970’s when someone 

is established as General Ed Wheeler of the Oklahoma National 

Guard, a White man, studied the riot, he was threatened with violence. 

Third, it was through the Oklahoma legislature’s Tulsa Riot 

Commission and the moral and financial support given to it by the 

legislature that we were finally able to piece together a complete 

picture of the riot. Though we knew pieces of this before, it was 

only through that comprehensive work representing the work of 

dozens of scholars and community members working over years 

that we were able to piece this together. 

When looking at photographs like this and the next one showing 

scenes of utter destruction for as far as the eye can see, one might 

ask how has the story been buried for so long. 

And I think the answer turns on an unholy combination of factors: the diligent efforts of Tulsa authorities and other prominent 

Tulsans to scuttle the story, to tell the world that Greenwood residents were to blame for the riot, to hide the culpability of the police 

department and the local units of the National Guard, and to 

threaten with prosecution those brave Greenwood leaders who 

might attempt to obtain justice. 

It was a culture of suppression in which, to borrow a phrase from 

Ralph Ellison’s novel, ‘‘Juneteenth,’’ Blacks were counted but not 

heard. And it has only been relatively recently as people who had 

culpability for the crimes such as murder have died and evidence 

has come to light that we have been able to put together the complete picture of the riot. 

I will in the interest of time just emphasize that the city and 

State are culpable. The tragedy is concentrated in time and place. 

14

This isn’t a claim for general societal reparations. And promises 

were made at the time to repair the community. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Brophy follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ALFRED L. BROPHY


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Mr. NADLER. Thank you very much, Professor. 

We will now hear from Professor Franklin, who is recognized for 

5 minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN, Ph.D., PROFESSOR OF 

PSYCHOLOGY (RETIRED), FORDHAM UNIVERSITY 

Mr. FRANKLIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be as brief as 

I can about——

Mr. NADLER. Could you put on your microphone, please? 

Mr. FRANKLIN. It is on, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. NADLER. Okay, thank you. 

Mr. FRANKLIN. I will be as brief as I can about a matter that 

means so much to so many people. 

My father was a lifelong resident of Oklahoma. We lived in a 

small village south of Tulsa for some years. I was born there. 

But in early 1921, my father went to Tulsa to open a law office. 

We were to join him at the end of the school term, as my mother 

was a teacher and I was a student. But after we had packed and 

were waiting for him to arrive to escort us to Tulsa, we waited, and 

we waited for more than a day. 

On the second day of waiting, my mother learned through the 

Muskogee Daily Phoenix that there had been a riot in Tulsa and 

that there were many casualties. For some days she did not know 

whether my father was living or dead. She finally got a note from 

him saying that he was unharmed but that he had been detained 

in the Convention Hall for several days. 

He said that he could not bring us to Tulsa. The whole town 

where we would live had been devastated by fires and by murders 

and by all kinds of activities that prevented a normal procedure in 

that part of the community. 

And so, we had to wait. We waited for 4 years before we were 

able to move to Tulsa. And it was at that time that I discovered 

that Tulsa was still on the move so far as reconstruction was concerned, that the Black part of town was still just in the midst of 

trying to rebuild. 

And as a matter of fact, when I came there, I was amazed to see 

houses still partly rebuilt, churches where only the basement had 

been reconstructed. It was a strange sort of appearance. 

Later, when I learned a little more and when I had learned 

something about architecture, I said that this town, this Black part 

of town is undergoing what might be called a post-riot building renaissance because the structures were just half-finished. And I did 

not know—I did not think they would ever be completely finished. 

But they were in due course. But I noticed also that there was 

a culture of silence that had settled down over the city. Nothing 

was discussed that had any connection with the riot. Indeed, children in the White part of town grew up not even knowing that 

there had been a riot. 

The mayor of Tulsa, the first woman mayor of Tulsa, Susan Savage, told me that she was a grown woman, although she had lived 

in Tulsa, born there after the riot, that she was a grown woman 

before she even knew that there had been a riot. A sort of culture 

of silence had settled down. And no one spoke of it, except in the 

Black part of town where they spoke of it in hushed tones and did 

25

not want to convey the impression that they had been defeated and 

almost destroyed by the action that was taken. 

It was in those years that my father brought suit against the 

city, against the State, against the insurance companies and anyone else who might have been connected with the riot in any way. 

I used to say that he lost all of those suits, except one which was 

against the city of Tulsa, which had passed an ordinance calling for 

no construction in the city that was not fireproof. 

Well, there were no resources for the Black community to build 

fireproof constructions. And so, my father commanded them to 

build, build with anything they had, orange crates and what not. 

And so, his clients were arrested and brought to trial for violation of the ordinance. And it was there that he was able to argue 

for them and to appeal and finally—and the State supreme court—

the court handed down the decision that the ordinance had been 

passed as an effort to prevent any kind of action, to prevent even 

any discussion of the riot. And so, he proceeded to carry on in this 

fashion for many years. 

And I want to say in conclusion that there were many of us like 

my schoolmate here to my left and others who survived. But most 

of our schoolmates have not survived. And they suffered during the 

remainder of their lives from the trauma of the experiences of 

1921. And I can say that had I arrived on schedule as I should 

have arrived on schedule that I might not be here, either, at this 

time. 

But I thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Chairman. And I could 

go on for many, many hours, but I won’t. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Franklin follows:]

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN


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Mr. NADLER. Thank you, Professor. 

Professor Hooker? 

TESTIMONY OF OLIVIA HOOKER, Ph.D., JAMES B. DUKE PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF HISTORY, DUKE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 

OF LAW 

Ms. HOOKER. Thank you, Representative Conyers and Committee, for allowing us to unburden ourselves after 86 years of suffering. 

As a small girl of 6 years, my two parents who had come to Oklahoma to teach in the Indian nations, my mother from Texas and 

my father from Mississippi. And when Oklahoma became a State, 

then it was possible for my father to go into business. 

But then picture with me the trauma of a young 6-year-old girl 

hearing things hitting the house, ‘‘bang, bang, bang, bang’’ like 

that, and thinking it was hail until my mother took me to the window and let me peer through the blinds and said, ‘‘That thing up 

there on the stand with the American flag on top of it is a machine 

gun. And those are bullets hitting the house. And that means your 

country is shooting at you.’’

This was a totally amazing thought to a child who was totally 

idealistic. I had never met any kind of discrimination because the 

salesmen who came to sell my father things always acted as if the 

children were so important in order to sell their goods. So I didn’t 

know about hatred. And this was devastating to me to think of my 

country shooting at me. 

As the publicity was suppressed, the nation did not know about 

what happened in Tulsa except through the Black press: Roscoe 

Dungee in Oklahoma City and Mr. Smitherman in Tulsa, who did 

publish it. But the local presses of many cities did not. 

It so happened my dad went down to the rubble. There was nothing but bricks left of the store, but he noticed his safe was still 

there. And he thought, ‘‘Well, I will try to open it,’’ thinking it 

would be empty. But, praise the Lord, it was not empty. 

He didn’t have money, but he had some war bonds. And he was 

able then, with a wise secretary, Mr. Greg, who had been trained 

in a graduate school in Germany—Archie Greg and my father went 

on a speaking tour to the Black churches of the United States on 

the East Coast mostly. 

They went to Washington to the AME Zion Church and to Petersburg and Lynchburg and Richmond, places like that, where the 

Black people in those towns sent missionary barrels of shoes and 

useful clothing. And those things were distributed out of the 

undestroyed part of Booker Washington High School. 

The Red Cross entered the field a little later because the local 

Red Cross had said they would not give people anything unless 

those people came and washed their clothes and took care of their 

children because they were desolate for help at home. Finally, the 

National Red Cross sent Maurice Willows, and things got better so 

far as issuing of materials. 

But the damage that was done was not only the material things. 

A house destroyed, the entire neighborhood destroyed, the businesses destroyed, all the services destroyed, our school bombed on 

the day that we should have been getting our report cards to move 

32

up to the next class so that the children of Tulsa were very devastated. 

The machine gun captain decided that he had to make my mother leave the house as she was pouring water on the house to try 

to keep it from burning. So he sent somebody down and said, ‘‘Tell 

that woman to get out of there with those children and go to a 

place of safety.’’ My mother was trained in oratory at Tuskegee. 

And she said, ‘‘I cannot go until I talk to these people who 

brought their children to watch this catastrophe.’’ And my mother 

started to speak to them to say it would be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation at which point the people said, ‘‘Stop that woman. She is scaring our children.’’

And a man came over and said to her, ‘‘When the mob gets out 

of your house, I will go down and put out the fire if I can.’’ And 

there was evidence at our house that he did do that. But, of course, 

most things were lost. 

I see I am over time. And I thank you again for letting me speak. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Hooker follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF OLIVA J. HOOKER

My name is Dr. Olivia J. Hooker, and I currently reside in the State of New York. 

I was born on February 12, 1915, and I am a survivor of what is known as the Tulsa 

Race Riot of 1921, but what was really a massacre of the Greenwood neighborhood 

of Tulsa, then called the ‘‘Black Wall Street.’’

My parents Samuel and Anita Hooker came to Tulsa from Holmes County Mississippi. At the time of the Riot, I lived on Independence Street in the Greenwood 

District of Tulsa with my parents and four siblings. 

At the time of the riot, my parents owned a home on Independence Street valued at $10,000 and a clothing store at 123 North Greenwood Avenue that was one of 

the most prominent stores in Greenwood. My home was severely damaged but not 

destroyed in the riot, however, the mob completely destroyed my parents’ business, 

which was described as ‘‘a total loss.’’

Furnishings valued at $3000 were either stolen or deliberately smashed or de- stroyed. Jewelry valued at $1000 furs valued at $1000 and silver valued at $500 

were also stolen. The estimated total loss of goods displayed at the store was 

$100,000. That makes a total loss of $104,000 to our parents during that riot. 

My parents were distraught over the loss of the many beautiful things they had 

purchased with their hard-earned money. The mobs hacked up our furniture with 

axes and set fire to my grandmother’s bed and sewing machine. I still remember 

the sound of gunfire raining down on my home and that the mob burned all my 

doll’s clothes. After the riot, my mother saved all the artillery shells that mobsters 

had put in all of our dresser drawers. 

As a child, I had believed every word of the Constitution, but after the riots happened, I realized that the Constitution did not include me. 

After the Tulsa violence, my mother took our family to Topeka, Kansas, while my 

father remained in Tulsa to try to restore his bombed out business. My father filed 

a lawsuit against the insurance company for the value of the destroyed property, 

but a judge threw the case out in 1926 or 1927. 

Later, we moved to Columbus, Ohio, where my sisters and I graduated from Ohio 

State University. After teaching third grade for seven years, I enlisted in the United 

States Coast Guard, becoming the first African American woman to enlist and go 

on active duty in the Coast Guard, then a part of the U.S. Navy during World War 

II. I earned an M.A. from Columbia University Teachers College on the GI Bill, and 

a Ph.d Degree at the University of Rochester where I was one of two black female 

students. I taught in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University, retiring as Associate Professor in 1985. 

We did go on with our lives after the riot but the memories of what happened 

to us then will never go away. The injustices we suffered the two days of the riot 

and the injustices we suffered after the riot when insurance companies failed to pay 

riot victims for their losses and when court officials summarily threw out our riot 

victims cases are a blot on Tulsa’s image that have not been erased to today.

Mr. NADLER. Thank you, Professor Hooker. 

33

Professor Ogletree? 

TESTIMONY OF CHARLES J. OGLETREE, JR., DIRECTOR, 

CHARLES HAMILTON HOUSTON INSTITUTE FOR RACE AND 

JUSTICE, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL 

Mr. OGLETREE. Thank you, Chairman Nadler, and thank you, 

Chairman of the Judiciary Committee John Conyers, and also the 

minority leader, Congressman Franks, for this hearing. 

These are challenging times for all of us. I represented these clients when I first met them in 2002 and, with the support of a volunteer group of lawyers, have represented them ever since. 

When we filed this lawsuit on their behalf on February 28, 2003, 

there were 150 living survivors. Since then, 70 have died in the 

last 3 years. They are dying every day. 

And one of the amazing things is that there is a edifice over the 

Florida Supreme Court. The court is where the injured flock for 

justice. And that is where we are today. 

This report, thanks to Don Ross and Al Brophy and people like 

Edie Fay Gates, this documents Oklahoma’s history. It is here, 

every single word, every single verse, every single crime, every single incident. And it took 80 years to unbury an American nightmare. But they did it. They did it. 

We have been in court—and if you read Judge Ellison’s opinion 

of the District Court, if you read the 10th Circuit’s opinion, no 

court has ever said that these clients are barred by a 2-year statute 

of limitations, which is normally the law. They said that the criminal justice system, the legal system in Tulsa, was not available to 

people of African descent at that time. And indeed, Judge Ellison 

said they couldn’t have filed suits in the 1920’s, 1930’s, 1940’s, 

1950’s or 1960’s because the courts were just not open. 

And then in an amazing feat of creative imagination, he said, 

‘‘Perhaps they should have filed in the 1960’s.’’ We went to the 10th 

Circuit Court of Appeals. The 10th Circuit said, ‘‘We don’t know 

when you should have filed this lawsuit, but sometime before 

today.’’

‘‘Sometime before today.’’ What kind of justice is that when our 

courts are—if they had said, ‘‘You should have been in court by 

1923; it is over.’’ They didn’t say that because they knew the justice 

system did not work. 

And what makes this so important is that these aren’t individuals who are asking for something that they didn’t earn. When you 

look at these photographs, the Greenland Theater was a treasure 

in Oklahoma and Tulsa. When you look at the J.B. Stratford Hotel, 

Blacks couldn’t stay any other place when they came to Oklahoma 

to perform. They stayed there. They had to live in segregation. 

That was destroyed. When you look at the businesses and the 

homes and the idea that no one has ever been held responsible 

criminally or civilly for destroying a 42-block Black community. No 

one has ever been held responsible. 

And this role is important because if we look at our own history, 

when I think of that Florida phrase, I think of this Committee. 

This is where the people flock for justice. When citizens saw their 

families exterminated in the holocaust, they couldn’t go to court. 

34

They tried to explain their history, but there was no one there to 

speak for them. 

When American citizens in the Second World War were placed 

in interment camps in the Western part of the United States and 

stayed there, it took a Republican Senator Bob Dole and a Democrat Senator Daniel Inouye to pass the 1988 Civil Rights Act decades after the incident to give them some reparations. 

When Black farmers throughout America found that they 

couldn’t go to Virginia and Michigan and all over the country, 

North Carolina to get their rights, Congress stepped in and said, 

‘‘They come here, and we will address their needs.’’ Every single 

time the courts have said no, someone with moral authority has 

spoken up to make sure that these injustices are addressed. 

And this isn’t, as Congressman Nadler said, it is not a riot. It 

really is ethnic cleansing. If we go back to Oklahoma City, a tragedy that all of us suffered from on April 19, 1995, there are monuments. The president of the United States was there. Every victim 

has been compensated. Every person responsible has been punished. We will never forget April 19, 1995, and nor should we. 

When we go to September 11, 2001, thousands of people lost 

their lives, friends of mine, personal friends. And we have compensated those victims. We have tried to bring those responsible to 

justice. 

And here we have document evidence record that hear the people. Otis Clark, Wess Young, Dr. Olivia Hooker, John Hope Franklin—they have never, ever, ever had their day in court. We simply 

ask you, Chairman Nadler and this Committee, to make sure that 

they get justice before they die. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ogletree follows:]

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHARLES J. OGLETREE, JR.


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ATTACHMENT


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Mr. NADLER. Thank you, Professor. 

The Chair will now recognize himself for 5 minutes. 

Professor Ogletree and Professor Brophy, the facts having been 

well-established, the real question, and, in fact, I think the only 

question here is the question of the statute of limitations. 

Now, we don’t have a Federal statute of limitations. The courts 

have borrowed States’ statutes of limitations. The courts have stated that equitable principles should be used for determining to what 

extent we will borrow the States’ statutes of limitations. 

Professor, could you place for us the bill before us would reopen 

for us in 5 years, very much like a toxic tort statute? 

Mr. OGLETREE. Right. 

Mr. NADLER. Could you place that for us in the context of what 

we have previously done or how courts have ruled reopening statutes of limitations in light of the fact that the courts were not open 

for so many years? And also elaborate what was significant about 

the 1960’s in one of the court decisions. 

Mr. OGLETREE. Well, thank you. Let me take the second question 

with Judge Ellison. 

Judge Ellison, like the 10th Circuit, they both understood the 

magnitude of the travesty that happened at Oklahoma City. And 

they knew that, as one of the slides show, in the 1920’s mayors, 

public officials, a lot of the elected officials were associated with the 

Ku Klux Klan. 

And Judge Ellison said in unequivocal terms the courts were not 

open. They were not available at all. But his sense was at some 

point America had a civil rights movement. But as John Hope 

Franklin has told you, people who were born in 1990 had no idea 

that this happened in 1921. That is the issue. 

There was no record of this until 2001. And that is what makes 

it so important. And that is why we filed the lawsuit. We filed the 

lawsuit within 2 years of having determined that this was necessary. 

The 10th Circuit said an extraordinary thing for a court to say. 

They didn’t say that the plaintiffs had no claim to bring the lawsuit. They said two important things. One, a book was written in 

1982, a book about the Tulsa Race Riots. Perhaps the survivors, 

Dr. Olivia Hooker, perhaps Otis Clark, perhaps Wess Young should 

have read this book in 1982 and realized what happened and filed 

a lawsuit. The author of that very book testified and said, ‘‘You 

know what? What I wrote in 1982 didn’t even address the scope of 

what happened. I didn’t find out until I, Scott Ellsworth, became 

a witness.’’

Mr. NADLER. So in other words, the court was looking or thought 

it had found some hook——

Mr. OGLETREE. Something, some point——

Mr. NADLER. Some hook, the book, the civil rights laws of the 

1960’s, on which it said, after that, people should have known and 

should have—and the statute should have started——

Mr. OGLETREE. Indeed. What they were really saying is that, 

‘‘We can’t solve this because we are unable to.’’ The report tells us 

this evidence was not disclosed. And this is a Committee appointed 

for the State of Oklahoma. And it gives you, Congress, a chance to 

look at this and give reasonable time. 

48

My only concern is time because clients died last week. They are 

dying every week. Even with this 5-year statute of limitations, my 

hope and expectation is that it can be done sooner. Otis Clark is 

104 years old. He has forgotten more than he has remembered. 

Mr. NADLER. Obviously we want to do it as quickly as possible. 

Professor, would you comment? Professor Brophy? 

Mr. BROPHY. Mr. Chairman, thanks very much. 

As you know, the statute of limitations is an artificial bar to 

something that would otherwise be a valid lawsuit. And along 

those lines, I would like to introduce my colleague, Suzette 

Malveaux’s terrific article in the George Washington Law Review 

specifically addressing statute of limitations for old civil rights 

cases. 

In terms of precedent, it strikes me as though one of the key 

precedents here is what you did for Black farmers in the Department of Agriculture case where you tolled the statute of limitations. 

When you are thinking of things that go back further even than 

the Tulsa Race Riot, I might refer you to the California legislation 

restarting the statute of limitations for victims of the Armenian 

genocide where folks who had not had—whose relatives died in 

that tragedy and then never received compensation from insurance 

companies, the State of California restarted the statute of limitations. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you very much. 

And my last question is really—Professor Brophy, again. Given 

the fact that this is grounded in 1983, among other things, that 

this is State involvement, that this is involvement by the Federal 

Government as well as the State and local governments. 

Does that affect, in your judgment, the equities of tolling the 

statute? 

Mr. BROPHY. I believe it does. And I think it affects it, makes it 

easier to restart the statute of limitations, in that this was done 

by the State and local governments. And it strikes me as though 

those folks have less of a claim to a statute of limitations. 

We have statute of limitations to give artificial repose to individuals. And I think the claims are much less strong in the case of 

a government than private entities. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you very much. 

The Chairman’s time is expired. I will now recognize the distinguished Mr. Franks for 5 minutes. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I want to thank the panel for your very moving testimony. 

As I said in my opening statement, I believe that the greatest 

challenge that we have in humanity is somehow recognizing each 

other in a way that carries with it the human dignity that is imparted to every person by God Almighty. I am convinced that that 

remains our greatest challenge even today. 

There are examples throughout history that are replete with 

these kinds of tragedies. You know, in Nazi Germany we saw 6 

million Jews murdered along with people of other groups as well 

that simply were looked down as inferior by this Nazi war machine. We saw in the whole worldwide tragedy of human slavery 

how something continued for thousands of years and that somehow 

49

we as human beings were not able to recognize what a tragedy all 

of that was. 

And we see it, in my judgment, today with abortion on demand. 

We don’t recognize, I think, the loss of 50 million of our own children. 

And I believe that all of us have some kind of historical reference 

in our own lives. And my own grandmother was a child of a Cherokee and talked often about some of the things that her mother 

had told her of the Trail of Tears. 

And I think that the greatest way that we can honor the victims 

and even to somehow repay the victims is to use their tragedy to 

somehow better the human family now and in the future. 

And quite honestly, Mr. Chairman, it is a hard subject for me because I am not sure that the bill that is considered here is the best 

way to do it, because it seems to me that it penalizes those who 

did not do this tragedy and ends up helping those that weren’t the 

victims of the tragedy. 

And that is a great concern to me because I believe if you apply 

the principles of this bill to all of the ones that I just mentioned, 

I guess we would just get lost. And somehow as a human family 

we have to come together and realize that at least we can say no 

more. It doesn’t have to continue like this. 

And so, I guess my question to you, Professor Ogletree, first is, 

are there any other persons who are responsible for the actual 

wrongs in Greenwood still alive today? 

In other words, you know, according to my math, if they were of 

maturity age at the time, they would have to be around 104 years 

old. I know that we have one 104-year-old victim here today. 

Are there any of those that were the perpetrators of this tragedy 

alive, as far as you know? 

Mr. OGLETREE. No. 

And the more direct answer to your question, Congressman 

Franks, is that—two things. 

First of all, there were murders in 1921. There is no statute of 

limitation on murder, even though those responsible are no longer 

with us. But secondly, there are claims of descendants. 

And this was State action. This was not just individuals. These 

were sheriffs deputizing people, going into pawn shops, gun shops, 

et cetera. 

And the graphic tells you that even though—here is the issue, 

the catch-22. In 1921, they couldn’t go to the court. They had to 

wait. Now that they have counsel, now that they have the evidence 

that was buried, now we are being told it is too late. 

That is where Congress comes in. There is an equity and justice 

point here. I am not trying to prosecute someone who killed Otis 

Clark’s relatives in 1921 or took Dr. Hooker’s property in 1921. But 

the reality is that there was State action. 

And we didn’t prosecute anybody in 1988 with the Civil Rights 

Act that was passed by Senator Dole and Senator Inouye. They just 

said Congress has a higher moral duty to do something. 

We didn’t prosecute anybody because Blacks were denied their 

right to their farming subsidies. When you passed the congressional subsidy for them, no one was punished. That was not the 

issue. 

50

The issue is, how do we correct a wrong before they die? 

I mean, they are here today, and they have been here. And my 

sense is that we can have a wonderful, I think, theoretical argument about, you know, who to punish. But in some sense, those 

who are the successors have some obligation. 

I think it was high-minded of the State of Virginia to express its 

regrets for slavery, as we heard from the State of Maryland. They 

didn’t hold anybody as slaves, but the current generation said, ‘‘It 

is on our watch.’’

I thought it was important for President Bush to have the 

Tuskegee airmen there, to apologize and salute them. It was important for President Clinton to have the syphilis experiment men 

there to apologize. 

At some point, somebody has to say, ‘‘I didn’t do it, but it happened on my watch, when I had the authority, the moral authority 

to correct it.’’

So we can get into that trap of, ‘‘No one is there.’’ But I think 

we can say, ‘‘Let’s look back and solve it,’’ in the sense it helps all 

of us and doesn’t punish anybody but, in a sense, sets the record 

straight and, I think, achieves a greater goal for all of us. 

Mr. FRANKS. Mr. Chairman, my time is up. But I would just like 

to express my agreement with the sentiments of Mr. Ogletree, that 

it is right and appropriate for those of us in later times to express 

regret for some of the tragedies that occurred in the past. 

And I think, again, the greatest way that we express that regret 

is to make sure on behalf of those victims that such tragedies are 

not repeated. 

Mr. NADLER. Professor, before I go into the next, let me—Professor Ogletree, is it not true that many of the descendants in lawsuits that might be brought are the State government and insurance companies, which are ongoing entities? 

Mr. OGLETREE. That is exactly right. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. 

Now I will recognize the distinguished Chairman of the Committee, Mr. Conyers. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Chairman Nadler. 

I hope that your discussion with Trent Franks has made it perfectly clear that we are following a long tradition in terms of tolling 

the statute of limitations. This is not new information. 

And I join Professor Brophy in asking unanimous consent that 

this tremendous article written by Professor Suzette Malveaux in 

the George Washington Law Review—which not only discussed the 

statute of limitations as a policy analysis, but applies it specifically 

to the Tulsa Riots of 1921 be submitted for the record. 

Let me now turn. The second question I am going to ask after 

I have talked with Dr. John Hope Franklin is to Professor Ogletree 

in, where do we go from here? Because it is not over. Once we toll 

the statute of limitations—is only the very first step in the beginning. I have the confidence to believe that this Congress will act 

appropriately. 

But before we come back to that, I wanted to ask Dr. John Hope 

Franklin about, just looking back on this 1921 tragedy, how was 

it created? How did it happen that so much hatred exploded and 

so much violence took place? 

51

And would Tulsa be much different today if this riot had not occurred? 

And are there other comparable race riots that you draw analogy 

between the Tulsa riot, Dr. Franklin? 

Mr. FRANKLIN. Well, yes. One has to remember that this is a period of extreme violence. It can hardly be called civilized, the relationships of people from the beginning of the 20th century right 

down to the time of the riot in Tulsa. There had been riots in 

Washington and Chicago along with Texas, Rosewood and many 

other places in the country. 

I think what is also interesting to observe is—and I have learned 

this from reading the journals, the newspapers and so forth in connection with something else—that you get a very remarkable degree of admission and contriteness on the part of even the Tulsa 

community in the months following the riot. You would have 

thought they would have come out and been pouring all of their 

largess on the people who were the survivors, except that after 

making these pious statements, nothing happened. They didn’t do 

anything about it. 

They threw things out of court that might have pursued justice 

in the long run. But what we need to remember is that this comes 

on the heels of enormous, enormous racist sentiment that is expressed even during World War I. It is to be remembered that 

Black soldiers who were in the war were not permitted to be a part 

of the United States Army in Europe. 

They had to be attached to the French Army. And then having 

been attached to the French Army, being treated somewhat equally, then the United States doesn’t want them back unless they can 

go through some sort of period of retraining so they can go back 

to their inferior status which they had occupied in the United 

States. 

So we have got a climate of hostility, of barbarism that is widespread in the years from 1918—called the Red Summer of 1918 because there were so many riots—down through 1922 or 1923. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you so much for putting that in perspective. 

Let me ask Professor Ogletree, where else do we go from here? 

Let us assume we get the limitations period tolled. 

Mr. OGLETREE. Well, I wish I had both been aware and able to 

answer that question 25 years ago because I would say we go back 

to Tulsa and we tell the stories. Thanks to the work of Don Ross 

and Edie Fay Gates, we have captured some of the testimony. 

Edie Fay Gates has interviewed hundreds, hundreds of AfricanAmericans who lost property, family who lost lives, businesses that 

were destroyed and have that record. But virtually every person 

that she has interviewed from the early times is now dead. And the 

numbers are staggeringly low. 

So I also hope there is also not a false sense of security that we 

toll the statute of limitations but we can’t help Otis Clark explain 

what happened to his home in 1921, you know, 87 years ago. Dr. 

Olivia Hooker documented all of her family’s losses with great detail. And we have that. But we have a documentary on the survivors. And what is sad about it is that we started interviewing 

people in 2004, 2003. And we have dozens of survivors interviewed. 

52

Eighty percent of the people who were interviewed to tell their 

story are dead, 80 percent. And so, I am hoping we can not only 

address this in terms of those who are living, but also find ways 

through descendants to establish some of these claims. And what 

we do know—we have the 42-block area. We know where they 

lived. And we know what was lost. 

Mr. CONYERS. Yes, thank you, Dr. Franklin and Professor 

Ogletree. 

Mr. OGLETREE. Thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. The time of the gentleman is expired. 

Mr. Pence is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. PENCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for holding this hearing on this appalling moment in American history. 

And I want to thank this thoughtful panel and particularly Professor Ogletree, with whom I had the opportunity to visit in chambers with the Chairman last week. 

Thank you for your role over many years, Professor Franklin, 

yours in bringing to light this travesty, national travesty of justice. 

I am especially anxious to have the opportunity to meet some of 

the vigorous survivors of this incident, who I know still continue 

to—were on CapitOl Hill this week and may be present today. And 

I would greet them as well. 

Thank you for your example of persistence and determination in 

the interest of justice. I commend you. And I am inspired by that 

persistence. 

Professor Ogletree, you and I had a chance to speak privately a 

little bit ago, but I thought it would be helpful to have you unpack 

some of these thoughts. 

And, Professor Franklin, the same. 

I find myself, as a student of American history, fascinated by 

what I like to refer to as progress interrupted in Black America. 

And it seems like what happened in 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 

and as, Professor Franklin, you stated, happened elsewhere in the 

country, while we feel a sense of moral outrage because it was an 

incident motivated by and organized around racial enmity, but it 

seems to me that, as I said to you last week, Professor, it feels a 

bit more like envy than racism. 

Madam Walker of Indianapolis fame is a great example of an entrepreneurial class in Black America that had within a single generation not only wrestled free from the shackles of slavery, but 

whose economic wealth was growing at a pace that significantly 

outpaced the broader population, according to most statistics from 

roughly immediately post-reconstruction to the advent of the New 

Deal. 

Black America was expanding economically and aggressively. 

There was an entrepreneurial class. 

And, Professor, it seems to me that I would love to get your sense 

because, as we think in this legislation about extending the statute 

of limitation, which is not without precedent, would be highly unusual to do, or, as some have suggested, whether a specific relief 

bill would be more appropriate in this case, whatever extraordinary 

relief the Congress would consider in this case, is it simply justified 

by the fact that this was an incident of barbaric racial violence that 

53

claimed the lives of 200 African-Americans and the one square mile 

Black district in the city? Or was there an economic motive here? 

Was this economic progress interrupted that was, if you will permit a gross analogy, thinly veiled under a sheet of sectarian racist 

sentiment? 

Professor Franklin? 

Mr. FRANKLIN. Well, I could throw the question back to you by 

pointing out—asking if Madam Walker had been White, would 

there have been some kind of resentment of her. 

Mr. PENCE. Right. 

Mr. FRANKLIN. I think the answer—if I may say so, I would answer that question by saying no; that she is a part of a contradiction. She is a part of a resentment that she cannot rise because the 

whole culture of this country, not in 1915 or 1916 when Madam 

Walker came on the scene, but for two centuries before that, we 

had had very carefully woven into our Constitution, into our legal 

system and everything the notion that the Madam Walkers of this 

world must not rise. 

Mr. PENCE. Right. 

Mr. FRANKLIN. They cannot. They cannot because they are not 

allowed to. It is contrary to the tradition, history, culture, law, everything of this country that she cannot—she has no business rising. 

And I think that there might have been some sentiment like that 

in the Hookers’ store, that, ‘‘What in the world was Mr. Hooker 

doing acting like he is not a subservient black person?’’ You see? 

He has got a store, and he has got goods in the store. He is acting 

out of order, that is not what he is supposed to be doing. He is supposed to be working for someone else. The experiences I have had, 

as a grown man over 80, of people looking at me and saying, ‘‘You 

are out of order. You are out of place.’’

The night before I got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, I was 

giving a party at my club, and I went down to see whether all of 

my guests had arrived. And when I got in, there was a woman, a 

White woman, who met me at the foot of the stairs. And she said, 

‘‘Here, you go and get my coat.’’ What was I doing there, except 

that I was there to serve her? You see? 

You have to understand what this—it is deep. The culture is 

deep, and is abiding. It is persistent. It is still here, which I think 

we ought to recognize. 

Mr. PENCE. And they are linked. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. The gentleman’s time is——

Mr. PENCE. They are linked. Thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Minnesota for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ELLISON. Professor Franklin, I wonder if you could share 

your thoughts on this subject. There has been demonstration of 

contrition and sadness, and even it has been said perhaps one of 

the best things or perhaps the only thing we could do is just say 

‘‘no more.’’

Given that there are survivors who are still around, there is still 

economic loss, tremendous economic loss that is still calculable, and 

54

given that the historic record has been laid out, is simply saying 

‘‘no more’’ good enough? 

Mr. FRANKLIN. No. I would say ‘‘no more’’ is not good enough. 

Mr. ELLISON. Professor Ogletree, do you have any views on this 

subject? 

Mr. OGLETREE. I agree. 

And I actually want to applaud Congressman Pence for raising 

the issue of compensation for the economic losses, because they 

were substantial. And I think that is exactly the direction. Whatever the cause may be, the economic losses were substantial. 

Tulsa was booming in terms of the oil industry, the untold secret. 

Envy? Yes. Power? Yes. I mean, the Dreamland Theater, the Stratford Hotel—if you look at this community, it was thriving, thriving 

despite segregation, despite racism. This wasn’t Tulsa. This was a 

Black segregated community that prospered economically. 

And the jealousy was, ‘‘They have something that they shouldn’t 

have.’’ But everything they had was earned—not government, not 

public. This was earned dollars, earned property, earned businesses. 

And there is no end to it. The only end to it, I think, is to try 

to figure out a way to both provide some form of compensation for 

the survivors and their descendants and also some correction of 

history. 

The one great thing about the Civil Rights Act of 1988, it didn’t 

just compensate people, but there was a public commitment to educate so that it never happened again. 

And to put Congressman Franks’ question in context—the Holocaust, 1930’s; internment, World War II, 1940’s; Black farmers, 

1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s; Tulsa, 1921—it proceeded 

all—we have corrected all of the rest. But here is one that is unmistakably clear. 

Oklahoma City, 1990, unmistakably clear; race riots in North 

Carolina. We are doing all of these things. But here is one that we 

have not addressed. And I think your efforts will make sure it is 

not enough. It is time to do it. 

Mr. ELLISON. Yes. You know, Professor Ogletree, I just want to 

add that, you know, even in the great State of Minnesota, in 1921, 

three African-American workers in a circus were lynched. And it is 

a horrific tragedy that some people in Duluth, Minnesota, still talk 

about. 

But I just want to ask Professor Brophy, do you believe that 

there are still substantial remedial measures that could be made 

available to the victims in this case? 

Mr. BROPHY. Thank you, Mr. Ellison. Yes, I do. 

And what I think is so critical is that there are people still alive 

who suffered the harm. Right? Oftentimes when the subject of reparations, for example, for slavery comes up, people say, ‘‘Well, nobody is still alive who was enslaved.’’ What is so critical here and 

what we saw in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was that direct living connection. 

We have the ability, I think, to restore something of that dreamland that existed for folks who made their way against the tide in 

Greenwood. And I hope either through this legislation or just direct 

remedial legislation will do that. 

55

Mr. ELLISON. And perhaps let me just change the direction 

slightly. In this debate, not just here today but in other arenas, it 

is often said that, ‘‘Well, you know, the people who did this, we 

don’t really know exactly who they are. Therefore, what can we 

really do?′′ But could you explain to the panel, to the folks who might be listening, what difference it makes that the State was deeply and fundamentally implicated in this and this is not simply a matter of 

one private individual harming other private individuals? Could 

you draw the connection to the State? 

Mr. BROPHY. Sure, right. The way in which people have spoken 

about this riot, including the 10th Circuit, was as an angry White 

mob. And I think what distinguishes the Tulsa riot from so many 

other instances is this is not a claim for general society reparations. This is a claim for something in which there has been specific, well-documented government actors—special deputies, the 

local police force working in conjunction with the local, not the outof-town, the local units of the National Guard—led to the destruction of Greenwood. 

And I think that is what distinguishes this. And that is some of 

the really important and new evidence that the Tulsa Race Riot 

Commission was able to put together, that this was the government doing this. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. The gentleman’s time is expired. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Virginia for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Professor Ogletree, let me just get a couple of quick questions 

just to make sure we understand what the bill does. The bill just 

extends, reopens the statute of limitations. And if it passes, that 

would not guarantee anyone’s victory. It would only allow them to 

bring the case on the merits. Is that right? 

Mr. OGLETREE. That is correct. 

Mr. SCOTT. And the plaintiffs in the case are already identified. 

They have to have been in the original case and denied their 

rights——

Mr. OGLETREE. Well, the——

Mr. SCOTT [continuing]. To be heard. 

Mr. OGLETREE [continuing]. Action that we filed was on behalf of 

all of the surviving plaintiffs and identifiable descendants as of 

2003. 

Mr. SCOTT. And so, is that list of people known? 

Mr. OGLETREE. Yes, we have the documentation. Edie Fay Gates 

has done a tremendous job of compiling data. 

And what is interesting—just to be clear about this—the vast 

majority of the survivors are not in Oklahoma. If you think about 

1921 when their homes were destroyed, there was no place to live. 

There was no shelter. They are in California, they are in New 

York, they are in Texas. So they are all around the country. And 

we are trying to gather them. 

Mr. SCOTT. But the list is known? 

Mr. OGLETREE. That is exactly right. 

Mr. SCOTT. And the defendants are insurance companies and 

local and State government? 

Mr. OGLETREE. That is exactly right. 

56

Mr. SCOTT. And if they are able to bring that case, they would 

have to show what the insurance companies didn’t pay and what 

the governments actually did. Is that right? 

Mr. OGLETREE. Right. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, could you explain if there had been no riot—

well, because of the riot what the insurance companies were—unjust gains and what the plaintiffs actually lost? 

Mr. OGLETREE. Yes. The Tulsa Race Riots Commission did a very 

thorough examination and found records that had been buried for 

decades to show who was insured, where they lived, the amount of 

loss and how the courts absolved the insurance companies back in 

the early 1920’s based on actions by Buck Colbert Franklin. 

John Hope Franklin’s father was the lawyer trying to resurrect 

this in 1923. And the court dismissed all those claims. But the 

records from the early 1920’s we now have. And it lays out many 

of the plaintiffs—not all, but many of the plaintiffs. And we have 

many of the descendants of those plaintiffs as well. 

Now, here is the big problem. We have to be clear, though. I 

mean, on May 31, 1921, it explodes. June 1st—if you think about 

this, this is a war. This is a bomb. You can’t go to the corner store. 

You can’t go to your bedroom. You can’t go to your law office to see 

a lawyer. 

I don’t know if we have a slide here, but Buck Colbert Franklin’s—I mean, talking about the courage of the 20th century. His 

office was destroyed. His home was destroyed. He found a few law 

books left over and literally filed a lawsuit in a tent on the streets 

of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was to represent clients who came 

through. 

And it shows John Hope Franklin’s father in that context trying 

to figure out what to do. This is what was left. Think about a lawyer in 1921, no telephone, no office, literally taking a tent, finding 

books and sitting there. And that is what—and history—this is 

what reminds us. 

We know what happened. We just haven’t had a remedy. But I 

think those records will help us prove it in going forward. 

Mr. SCOTT. And, Dr. Franklin, if there had not been a riot, could 

you tell what other opportunities people would have had in terms 

of inheritance, business opportunities, educational opportunities, 

how they would be better off today had the riot not occurred? 

Mr. FRANKLIN. Well, I can only speculate, Congressman Scott. I 

don’t think there is any doubt but that, with the energy that that 

Black community was already displaying, if there hadn’t been the 

kind of interruptions which were brought on by the riot and the 

various activities connected with it, there is no question but that 

the professional people, the economic enterprisers and all the rest 

would have moved rapidly and upwardly in the whole order of the 

scheme of things. 

I don’t think there is any question but that if they had had the 

opportunity, without the interruption of the riot and so forth, they 

would have been infinitely better off in the next period, in the next 

decade, say, than they had been in the previous decade. I don’t 

think there is any question of that. 

Their energy and enthusiasm and wisdom and expertise that 

they displayed even after the riot suggests to me that if they had 

57

had the opportunity without this kind of tragic interruption, they 

would have been far along on the road to prosperity and that sort 

of thing. 

Mr. NADLER. The time of the gentleman is expired. 

The gentleman from California is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you. I always benefit from earlier questions. And I do find 

it sad to look at a middle-class wiped out long after the justice system was instructed to, in fact, support equal rights. 

But in the case of equal rights, I have a line of questioning that 

I want to understand from a standpoint of the legislation. 

I don’t think any of us in this room have any question but that 

there was an injustice. And the injustice did not have—because of 

the times, because of the system—did not provide you all with a 

remedy within the time allotted within the statute. 

But I have two questions. One is, if we assume for a moment 

that the State case, which you brought, expired and we cannot 

make that whole—this legislation doesn’t try to preempt the State 

and tell them to do something. But from a Federal standpoint, if 

this legislation, which it doesn’t appear to do, simply put back into 

place a venue for you to be made whole in Federal court for those 

State laws and Federal laws which were in effect in 1921, would 

you be satisfied? 

Mr. OGLETREE. The answer is no. I think, as you can see, that 

some of the harm is both hard to ascertain and to prove, number 

one. 

And number two, you are right in pinpointing the magnitude of 

it. Think about the Jewish families that Congressman Franks 

talked about. Your name is Finkelstein, and you are trying to prove 

that your family had losses, and they say there are 100 

Finkelsteins. How do we know this is you? How can we prove it? 

And it is a question of equity. We know you were there. We know 

you lost property. We know things were destroyed. And that is 

what happened. Black farmers—their records—all the records were 

destroyed when they tried to go into an office in Kentucky or North 

Carolina. And if they never filed your claim, there is no records 

there. So how do you prove it? 

I think what——

Mr. ISSA. Sure. And I understand that. Although my time is limited, the question probably begs three follow-ups to maybe get to 

a full understanding. 

There are injustices on the books. I happen to have a very large 

Native American group of tribes in my district. And the injustices 

within the Native American community are probably the only ones 

that the African-Americans look at and say, ‘‘They had it worse.’’ 

They were exterminated. They were exterminated in mass quantities deliberately. 

So when I look at the injustices, I look at a country which has 

historically tried to right the wrong. And we have done some 

through legislation. I don’t believe we have ever done—I don’t 

know of a precedent for it, and that is why I am asking. I don’t 

know that we have ever said we are going to make a remedy available that wasn’t available at the time, and we are going to say it 

because of the absence of a statute of limitation. 

58

The remedies that were available in 1921 or remedies which 

were passed specifically envisioning a specific event, from what I 

can tell, have not yet been linked. In other words, the Civil Rights 

Act was not intended, discussed or created in order to deal with injustices of 1921 retrospectively. And that is my question. 

This Committee has a very strong hook to the Constitution and 

wanting to look at how we can give you everything that we can 

give you to make this as just as possible but not cross that line. 

And I have concerns that are crossing the line by essentially saying 

we are going to give you rights under an act that was by no way, 

shape, or form ever envisioned at the time of the injustice. 

Mr. OGLETREE. Professor Brophy can respond in a minute, but I 

want to show you a slide here from Judge L.J. Martin 2 weeks 

after the riot, so this is contemporary. 

Mr. ISSA. No, look, I am the first to say, give you everything we 

can possibly give. My question, though, and in my limited time, 

is—and, Professor, maybe you can help me. I am looking for how 

we do this without opening Pandora’s Box to essentially looking at 

everything forever that was done wrong by passing a subsequent 

and then retolling against it—and particularly when I look at Native Americans and reopening, there is no limit. 

Please, Professor. 

Mr. BROPHY. No, I understand. And that is why I think it is so 

critical that this is a discrete tragedy, right, where there was no—

this isn’t general societal reparations. 

Mr. ISSA. Right. 

Mr. BROPHY. This is very discrete, and people are still alive. 

But what we are asking for is retolling the statute of limitations 

for civil rights acts that were on the books in 1921, just not given 

effect. Right? We sued under 1983, which you folks passed around 

1871. So what we are asking for is our chance to have a hearing 

on statutes that we could not have at the time. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. NADLER. The time of the gentleman is expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina. 

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank the 

Chairman for convening this important hearing and thank Mr. 

Conyers for introducing the bill. 

I am almost mesmerized by the quality of the testimony this 

morning. I have heard Dr. Franklin speak many, many, many 

times. And I don’t think I have heard him be more profound than 

he was in response to the question that Mr. Pence raised, in particular. We, in North Carolina, have reached the point where, if we 

are in a room with Dr. Franklin, we need to be listening rather 

than talking. 

And so, I want to direct a general question to Dr. Franklin that 

will allow him to just talk to me because I am always trying to be 

in that position as much as I can. 

One of the concerns that everybody will raise is a spin-off of the 

question that was last raised: Once we get on the slippery slope, 

what precedents are we setting for other situations? 

There are obviously distinctions and similarities between what 

happened in Tulsa and in other localities around the country. Dr. 

59

Ogletree referred to the incidents in Wilmington, North Carolina, 

for example. 

How might we frame this issue to, number one, address the concerns about being on a slippery slope that creates a precedent for 

other situations, yet not foreclose the possibility that there may 

well be other situations that still cry out for a similar kind of analysis and the possibility of compensation or opening or waiving of 

statute of limitation? 

And let me address that question to Dr. Franklin, Dr. Ogletree 

and Professor Brophy, who at some point in his testimony said that 

promises were made at the time to repair the community, and have 

the three of you kind of address that issue for me and the Committee’s concern about the slippery slope. 

Mr. FRANKLIN. Well, let me just say very briefly that it is my 

view that all of these situations are different. They have different 

causes. They have different outcomes. And so, you can frame your 

proposals to meet the needs of that particular situation. 

What is interesting about this is that there was a time in the 

1920’s when there was widespread expression of willingness to face 

the problem and do something about it. If you read the papers in 

1922 and 1923, it is amazing at the effort on the part of local press 

and people writing, speaking in the local press. It is amazing how 

much contriteness you get and how willing the community is to 

face up to this. 

And then they shut down. I mean, it is real—it is a real shutdown. Nothing happens after about 1923 or 1924. And I think it 

was because there was this deliberate decision made. I don’t know 

whether it was made by a corporate group, by the whole group or 

whether it was just reached, made by individuals. 

But after that, you don’t get anything else. It is stonewalling 

after that. And there is silence, silence, complete silence. 

And I think that was not true in any other community that I 

know about in the post-riot period. But there was in this community so that the mayor who comes up in much, much later had 

never heard of it, never heard of it. And I think that is where it 

shut down. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. The time of the gentleman is expired. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Tennessee for 5 minutes. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am in awe in being before you, Dr. Franklin. When I was a 

Vanderbilt student, your text, ‘‘From Slavery to Freedom,’’ was one 

of the texts I had, and I have it on my bookcase in Memphis. And 

really, to be honest, I wondered if it was your father because you 

don’t look old enough to have written a book when I was in college. 

But I guess that shows my age as well. [Laughter.] 

Can you give us some background on the extent and the rise of 

the Klan and the strength they had in this area and in the South 

in the 1920’s? 

Mr. FRANKLIN. Well, of course, the Klan had a period of decline 

in the first part of the 20th century, and then they had a very 

great recrudescence and rise. In 1915 at Stone Mountain where 

they were really resurrected, and they reorganized. They were inspired, stimulated by, among other things, ‘‘The Birth of a Nation,’’ 

the first film that came out that year that glorified the Klan of an 

60

earlier period. So that they do—this is a period of great prosperity 

for the Klan. 

In the late teens and early 1920’s, that is when they flourished 

greatly. And it is this group already organized now in 1915, the 

very year I was born, that is ready, willing, able and anxious to put 

down the Blacks of Tulsa and of Rosewood and of other places in 

the 1920’s. And the Klan is flourishing all during the 1920’s, absolutely flourishing. 

And I can remember seeing them parading and so forth. It is 

amazing. And it is so un-American. It is so anti-American. It is 

so—all of these things that we stand for. And they not only do that, 

but they are glorified in doing it and celebrated. 

I can think of no other—I don’t know that there is anything that 

could happen where they bring their children to lynchings, pass out 

the body parts as souvenirs and continue this kind of action in the 

face of what we ought to have in the way of law enforcement. 

There is no enforcement of anything in this period. And it is the 

Klan’s day. 

Mr. COHEN. If I remember my history in the 1920’s, I think they 

elected some governors or might have come close to it. I mean, they 

hit a peak in the 1920’s, did they not? 

Mr. FRANKLIN. Yes. Yes. I would not be able to say that Governor 

So-and-So was elected by the Klan, but——

Mr. COHEN. Right. 

I would just like to comment. And I know I have heard before 

people say, ‘‘Well, we can’t make up for past grievances and we 

need to move on.’’

But it is kind of like, if you had a football game and you had one 

team and you didn’t give them shoulder pads and you didn’t give 

them cleats and you didn’t give them helmets and they didn’t have 

training and they didn’t have Gatorade and the officials were 

crooked, and you played the game, and you played the game, and 

you played the game, and all of a sudden you realized it is getting 

near the end of the game and it is 72 to nothing, you go, ‘‘All right, 

this was a mistake. We are going to give you shoulder pads. We 

are going to give you real helmets. We are going to start to give 

you Gatorade and train you and all the right things. And we are 

going to have real good officials now,’’ but it is 72 to nothing, and 

there is 3 minutes left. That is not fair. 

And that is what you are saying when you say, ‘‘Well, we just 

can’t make up for these. They happened in the past, but let us just 

let bygones be bygones, and let us start over now.’’

There are a lot of companies that are ‘‘So-and-So and Sons,’’ or 

‘‘So-and-So, So-and-So, So-and-So, So-and-So and Sons.’’ But African-American people who were in Tulsa couldn’t be that because 

their property and their businesses were destroyed. And they didn’t 

have that opportunity. They didn’t have capital going through generations to give them opportunities. 

And statute of limitations are basically for the ordered society. 

It is for who is in control. It is for the defendant. It is never for 

the plaintiff. It is to give people who are liable a date that they can 

clean up their books and move on. 

And this is such an horrendous case that there should be some 

way to get beyond the statute of limitations. And we need to do 

61

that, because statute of limitations aren’t for people who have been 

aggrieved; they are for people who were the aggriever. That is what 

they are all about. And that is what a lot of the system is about, 

is a defense bar. 

So I am pleased that the Chairman of the Subcommittee has 

held this hearing and that Chairman Conyers has brought this bill. 

It has been edifying to me. And I am going to do what I can to follow the lead to see justice is brought forth. 

And I thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. The time of the gentleman is expired. 

I now recognize for 5 minutes the gentlelady from Texas. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me thank the Chairman very much. 

And let me thank the Chairman of the full Committee for a concise, constructive and forthright initiative through legislation. 

If I might for a moment reflect on the crossroads of history and 

comment on the panel that is before us, because I think sometimes 

history crosses paths and we have choices to make in the direction 

that we travel. 

Let me acknowledge Dr. Brophy because he comes out of a segregated South. And when I say that, he now teaches at the University of Alabama. And he is here before us to make an argument in 

support of relief, if you will, for those who have been aggrieved and 

makes one speechless about how they have been aggrieved. 

Dr. Franklin, someone had mentioned how youthful you look, but 

how interesting it is that you are the son of a survivor or a son 

of one of those who, not only was at the cornerstone of helping 

those who had been grieved, but now you have come to be a premier historian for this nation and I might say for the world. 

I do want to as well out of a moment of personal privilege acknowledge Dr. Hooker. And I will ask her the first question because she is a living survivor but yet the first African-American 

woman at the Coast Guard or joined the Coast Guard, but I note 

a meritus professor at Duke University School of Law. That is no 

short accomplishment. 

And, Dr. Ogletree, Professor Ogletree, you come from the school 

of W.E.B. Dubois, however he could have gotten there. So I want 

to make note of this panel. 

Dr. Hooker, let me ask you as I try to make sure that we understand that H.R. 1995, the legislation that Chairman Conyers has 

offered, really goes no further than what this body has been asked 

to do in times past. I don’t think it goes any further than the 13th, 

14th, and 15th amendment. And why I say this is that it is a pathway for seeking remedy. 

There is nothing in this—this is not a private bill which says—

and as we pass this, we will dispense certain dollars to these survivors or their descendants. Mind you, through 9/11, as my colleagues have said, we actually through a congressional action—and 

certainly, that was a horrific tragedy—actually dispensed or created a vehicle for monies to be dispensed. 

So we have gone further than this legislation. I think it is very 

important to let everyone know that this is a four corners document. It ends on this page of the document. It says you can go to 

court. 

62

Dr. Hooker, would you tell me again. You said you looked out the 

window, your mother showed you a gun, a machine gun with an 

American flag. Was that accurate? Is that what you said in your 

testimony? 

Ms. HOOKER. That is what I said. And that is what we experienced. The machine gun captain, when he ordered us out of the 

house, said, ‘‘I can’t protect you.’’ But the guns and the bullets were 

hitting the house. He said he was shooting at the mob, but it was 

hitting the house and could have killed us. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. So you were confused because, whether or not 

he was part of the State action that we speak of, it was unclear 

because the bullets were hitting the house? 

Ms. HOOKER. It was unclear to me why someone who was sent 

to protect you was not protecting you. And they took the men away. 

And my 8-year-old brother was one of the ones they interned before 

they turned the mob loose. In other words, they cleared out all the 

male population and locked them up, and then said to the mob, 

‘‘There is nothing out there but women and children.’’

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And that was a State action, might I make it 

very clear. Dr. Hooker could testify to that if this bill was to pass. 

Dr. Franklin, would you then respond to a, if you will, suggestion 

that we have made it, there are individual success stories in the 

African-American population, there are individual success stories 

in the population that sits before us, the survivors; why then would 

there need to be a remedy? 

Mr. FRANKLIN. Well, I think there needs to be a remedy because 

the individual success stories do not explain the plight of these victims, you see. When you look at the victims, you have to think 

about the least that can be done to facilitate their progress or their 

survival. 

And I think one of the things we often do or too often do in this 

country is to—it is to point to Booker Washington or whatever and 

say that why can’t you do what Booker Washington did or why 

can’t you do what someone else did that has risen. But you can’t 

do that. That is not what the opportunities provide. 

The least among us is the one that ought to be watched and 

cared for and looked after, not the successful ones, sometimes 

lucky, successful ones, but the least. 

Mr. NADLER. The gentlelady’s time is expired. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. The time of the gentlelady is expired. 

I now yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady from California. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am very 

appreciative for this hearing that you are holding. 

And I would like to thank Chairman Conyers for authoring or 

sponsoring the legislation that would effectively waive the statute 

of limitations, I suppose, in this case. The 10th Circuit was just 

simply wrong. 

And I would like to thank particularly Professor Ogletree for his 

persistence. He has stuck with this, along with Dorothy Tillman 

over there from Chicago. It is the kind of persistence and strength 

we don’t see a lot of these days. It is just remarkable. 

I would like to thank Dr. John Hope Franklin for his consistent, 

ever-present involvement in civil rights and justice. 

63

And for all of the survivors, I am just in awe. These survivors 

have been on this trail for a long time. I was recalling earlier about 

the Supreme Court in the dead of winter when these aged survivors did not complain. They were there bundled up. I have been 

to Tulsa with Professor Ogletree. They are always there. They sit 

for hours. It is absolutely amazing. 

And I thank all of you. And I am dedicated to the proposition 

that if you can do this, we can do this. And it makes a difference 

that now that we are in charge that we do everything that we possibly can to get some justice in this case. 

Let me just say that there is a gentleman in the back of the 

room. He is a cab driver. His name is Mack. He drove me, picked 

me up on the corner this morning as I was coming to work. He said 

when he heard my voice, he recognized the voice. 

He said, ‘‘Are you that lady from California? Do you know anything about this hearing that is going to be held today?’’ And I said, 

‘‘Yes, I do. And I am on my way there.’’ And he said, ‘‘Well, you 

know, I want to come, too.’’ I said, ‘‘Well, park this cab and get over 

there and come on over here with us.’’

And there he is in the back of the room. And that is Mack who 

has been driving a cab. Mack has been driving a cab for 40 years. 

He is a third-generation Washingtonian. 

But it is the Macks of the world who depend on us to make 

things right. I mean, you have got a lot of people out there who 

care about what happens with all of this. And so, I am glad that 

he is here. And I am glad that we are here and we are able to exercise our power and our influence. 

Now, I was the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus when we 

negotiated with Janet Reno to waive the statute of limitations. I remember her coming to my office with Rahm Emanuel. I kicked 

Rahm Emanuel out of my office because he didn’t think it could be 

done. And we convinced Bill Clinton and Janet Reno to move. 

And as I understand it, it was when they came to this Committee 

that you created and helped to fashion, along with Sensenbrenner, 

the statute that was needed. We did it then, and we can do it 

again. We can do it again because there is nothing that stops the 

Federal Government from deciding that it can do it. 

As I understand, everything taking a look at what has been put 

before us today, the 10th Circuit had the option. It did not exercise 

the option. And the reasons that they gave are not substantial, in 

my estimation, having reviewed this. 

So from here, we get this out of Committee. We work it past the 

floor. We get our Senate with us. And we will put it on the president’s desk. And we will stand with it until justice is done. 

In closing, let me just say, again, Mr. Chairman, you have 

worked hard for so many years in doing the impossible. And, again, 

you have demonstrated your courage by taking up an issue that 

has been ignored for too long. And this will be part of your legacy 

and all of our legacy, I suppose. We know what the obstacles are 

that will be placed before us. 

But, Mr. Ogletree, let me just say to you, Professor, if you may, 

just answer one question in this time limit that I have. What is it 

that made you so determined, so sure that this was the right thing 

to do? Why have you stuck with this so long and so hard? 

64

Mr. OGLETREE. Congressman Waters, thank you so much. 

It happened because—and Congressman Nadler, two of your constituents, Michele Roberts, one of the lawyers from New York is 

here. She worked with us. And Fay Anderson is also from New 

York. They are here for the hearing. I stuck with it because I 

walked into a room in 2003, saw these people. And no one had ever 

said, ‘‘I am sorry, I understand, and I want to help.’’

What makes it amazing is that I talked to Wess Young about 

what they received, and I made a mistake. I said they got a gold 

medal from the State of Oklahoma. He said, ‘‘No, first, it is not 

gold; it is brass. And it was given by the Black caucus from Oklahoma.’’ That is all they have ever been given. And that, to me, is 

an American tragedy. 

And if I have—when I went to Johnny Cochran, he put money 

in. Everyone saw this as something that—this is what our life is 

about. If we are here with God’s grace to do something, these are 

the cases that matter, not the ones that make money or give us 

fame, but the unknown, the faceless, the powerless. That is what 

we do. 

And I am so glad that 4 years ago when we filed this lawsuit—

and we have lost, we have lost, we have lost, we have lost—to even 

be before Congress, to have you here present, to have a bill with 

their fingerprints on it, we have made it. 

And we will use every ounce of our breath and our commitment 

to make sure that they in their lifetime can tell their children and 

now grandchildren, now great-grandchildren and great-greatgrandchildren somebody heard them in the wilderness and gave 

them comfort. That is why I am here. 

Mr. WATT. And finally, if I may, 30 seconds, Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. NADLER. Without objection. 

Mr. WATT. I don’t know if the Committee had an opportunity to 

meet the survivors. Did they? And they know who is here with us 

today? 

Mr. OGLETREE. Very briefly. But they are here. 

Just one last time, Otis Clark, 104-year-old, is the oldest survivor. If he will stand. 

Mr. WATT. One-hundred-and-four years old. 

Mr. OGLETREE. Wess Young, 91-year-old survivor; Dr. Olivia 

Hooker, 91-year-old survivor; and John Hope Franklin, 92-year-old 

son of Buck Colvert Franklin; and Edie Fay Gates, who has been 

the chronicler of their work; and former Representative Don Ross, 

who has written it; and their current representative who lives in 

their—they live in the district, Jamar Shomate. 

I think I have gotten everybody. Those are the folks. And the 

next generation, Demarial Solomon Simmons, the young man from 

Oklahoma who is going to help make this thing go forward. 

Mr. WATT. Demarial, yes. Yes. Thank you. 

Mr. OGLETREE. Thank you. 

I would ask the Chairman, if we could—I have been showing the 

PowerPoint that describes much of the timeline. With your permission, I would like to have that in the record for this Committee to 

consider. 

Mr. NADLER. Without objection. 

[The information referred to is available in the Appendix.] 

65

Mr. NADLER. The Chair thanks the witnesses and all the survivors and the other people who came today. 

Without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative days to 

submit to the Chair additional written questions for the witnesses, 

which we will forward and ask the witnesses to respond as promptly as you can so that your answers may be part of the record. 

Without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative days to 

submit any additional materials for inclusion in the record. 

Again, I thank all participants. 

And with that, this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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