Parshina Kottsa Massacre Essay

Jessica Carter Janice Dowell PHI.192 04/08/2024.

Reparations

The Tulsa massacre was a massacre that occurred in May 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the neighborhood of Greenwood. The neighborhood was home to what was known as “America’s Black Wall Street” (Parshina-kottas et al.). It is a thriving neighborhood with around 10,000 residents. It all began when a black teenager, Dick Rowland, was accused of sexual assault by a white teenage girl, Sarah Page, who happened to be in the same elevator with him at the time. The most common theory is that Dick Rowland had tripped on something and in the heat of the moment, he grabbed onto Sarah's arm in an attempt to regain his balance. By the next day, Dick Roland had been brought into custody in the

As the day grew closer to dawn, a mob of white people showed up in Greenwood, outnumbering the Black residents who fought back and thus the massacre began. The mob indiscriminately shot at any black person they saw in the streets, “ransacked homes and stole money and jewelry. They set fires ‘house by house, block by block,’” (Parshina-kottas et al). White pilots dropped dynamites from the sky as well. “35 blocks burned to the ground; as many as 300 dead; hundreds injured; 8,000 to 10,000 left homeless; more than 1,470 homes burned or looted; and eventually, 6,000 detained in internment camps” (Parshina-kottas et al) and the neighborhood's economy was destroyed. As a result of the massacre, survivors were left with nothing and for decades Tulsa County deliberately ignored and covered up the events that happened. While some surviving business owners were able to recover and move on, the majority did not have the same fate. This leads to the next topic, corrective justice and reparations. Reparations are a form of corrective justice, and corrective justices

A common objection to reparations is “it's not feasible”. However, this is not good reasoning, there are many instances of such “unfeasible” things actually being feasible. An example of this was the first moon landing in 1969. If you were to ask an ordinary man on the street a few years prior if he thought we could ever reach the moon, he would have said no, yet that didn't stop it from happening. Therefore saying something is not feasible is not evidence that something is not feasible and shouldn't be used as an argument (Dowell). Reality is, reparations are a very crucial step needed in order to make amends and help the affected party heal and recover from the unfair circumstances they were forced into. Now, the question of whether or not the state of Oklahoma owes reparations to the survivors or the descendants of the survivors of the Tulsa Massacre; the answer is yes. After the massacre, although Dick Rowland did end up being acquitted, nobody was held truly responsible for all the damage and pain the massacre brought, as well as no survivors or victims were ever compensated for any of their losses (Dowell.) It would only be the fair thing to do if the victims were offered some sort of compensation and reparation, even if it's just in the