NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� It wasn鈥檛 until his junior year of college that civil rights attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons learned about a devastating massacre that took place in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
His African American studies professor lectured about what is known today as the 鈥� the days in 1921 when white mobs carried out a scorched-earth campaign against an outnumbered Black militia protecting the fabled Black Wall Street, a prosperous all-Black community.
鈥淚 actually told a teacher, 鈥業鈥檓 from Tulsa. That鈥檚 not true,鈥欌�� Solomon-Simmons recalled. 鈥淎nd of course, I was wrong.鈥�
That day planted a seed for the then-aspiring attorney, who went on to lead a reparations campaign for the living survivors of the massacre and their descendants. Nearly 105 years later, no one has been compensated for what they lost, and none of the culprits have been held accountable.
That fight for reparations is the subject of Solomon-Simmons鈥� first book, 鈥淩edeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America,鈥� which is intended as a blueprint for justice in historic atrocities that Black Americans endured but never received reparations for. The book hits shelves Tuesday.
After the massacre, more than 35 city blocks of the neighborhood known as Greenwood were leveled in fires, an estimated 191 businesses were destroyed, and roughly 11,000 Black residents were displaced. The state of Oklahoma declared the death toll to be only 36 people, although many historians and experts who have studied the event put the death toll between 75 and 300.
Greenwood, founded in 1906, had been , with Black-owned grocery stores, soda fountains, caf茅s, barbershops, a movie theater, music venues, cigar and billiard parlors, tailors and dry cleaners, rooming houses and rental properties.
鈥淚f you can ignore Greenwood, which was the beacon of Black prosperity and Black progress in the history of this country, then you can ignore Black people in general,鈥� Solomon-Simmons recently told The Associated Press. 鈥淚 think that鈥檚 why people around the nation are so focused on the work that we鈥檙e doing, because they understand what it means to all of Black America.鈥�
Solomon-Simmons鈥檚 book comes just months before the United States will mark since its founding in 1776. That was 89 years before the institution of chattel slavery 鈥� meaning an enslaved person was held as legal property of another 鈥� was abolished. The civil rights attorney questions the idea that Americans can truly celebrate the country’s accomplishments when it has yet to pay reparations, which historians say informs modern day disparities in wealth between Black and white people.
鈥淲e cannot talk about what America has been and will be, without making sure that these issues are discussed and we get reparatory justice for both鈥� slavery and the Tulsa massacre, Solomon-Simmons said.
‘America has never had a soul’
In 343 pages, Solomon-Simmons does more than recite the history of the massacre or make a legal thriller out of his reparations campaign. For him, securing justice for the survivors and descendants of the massacre is also about healing a nation whose earliest promises of equality for all rang hollow.
鈥淲hen I speak of repairing America鈥檚 soul, I do not mean restoring something that was once whole,鈥� Solomon-Simmons writes in the book. 鈥淎merica has never had a soul. 鈥� There was no moral center to recover.鈥�
He suggests that America’s soul cannot be repaired if it is forced to choose between rebuilding the nation or repairing Black America. They must do both, he says.
鈥淭he struggle for justice in Greenwood is not about returning to a mythical past. It is about proving whether America can build a soul at all through truth, through justice, through repair.鈥�
and other historical racial injustices has been debated in the U.S. since Reconstruction, through the Civil Rights Movement and for much of the 21st century. Jennifer L. Morgan, a professor of history at New York University, said such debates are complicated by the question of exactly who pays the reparations and exactly who receives the payment.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think that we鈥檙e talking about individuals who owe anybody else reparations. I think we鈥檙e talking about states, about institutions, about the nation,鈥� Morgan said. 鈥淎merica is still grappling with reparations because America is still grappling at the legacy of slavery, racial discrimination, Jim Crow, and violent exclusion of Black people from the body politic.”
Some opponents of reparations argue there are no living culprits or direct victims of enslavement, much less people with verifiable claims of harm that can be presented in a court of law.
Solomon-Simmons disagrees.
鈥淲e know who did the massacre 鈥� the perpetrators are still living in Tulsa,鈥� he said referring to the city and the chamber of commerce, which plaintiffs alleged had a hand in obstructing Greenwood’s recovery.
There is one remaining massacre survivor involved in the reparations lawsuit: 111-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle.
鈥淚f we cannot get her reparations while she鈥檚 alive, for the massacre, it鈥檚 gonna make it that much harder for us to get reparations for enslavement, Jim Crow, redlining and all those things that we are owed,鈥� Solomon-Simmons said.
Fight for Tulsa reparations continues
In the book, Solomon-Simmons reflects on what committed him to the reparations fight.
While in law school, he was introduced to high profile civil rights attorneys working for the Reparations Coordinating Committee 鈥� the late Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree Jr., who mentored Barack and Michelle Obama; and the late Johnnie Cochran, who is widely known for defending O.J. Simpson during his trial for murder of his ex-wife. Solomon-Simmons became a law clerk for the committee.
After witnessing Ogletree argue a Tulsa reparations case in federal court in 2004, Solomon-Simmons said the practice of law stopped being just a credential for speaking, writing, or teaching. It became a calling.
In 2020, Solomon-Simmons led a lawsuit on behalf of 11 plaintiffs, including the last three known living survivors of the massacre, against the City of Tulsa and seven defendants. The suit was the first of its kind in state court and the first to get far enough to see a judge. In 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit. In the final days of the Biden administration, the Justice Department saying it had determined there is no longer an avenue for criminal prosecution over the massacre.
But the fight continues, Solomon-Simmons says, for cash payment to Randle and other descendants, as well as the return of land stolen after the massacre and during a period of urban renewal in Tulsa.
In 2025, the city鈥檚 first Black mayor, Monroe Nichols, endorsed a broad proposal dubbed Project Greenwood, which calls for financially compensating Randle, funding a scholarship program for descendants of victims, and designating June 1 as Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day.
Solomon-Simmons also runs the nonprofit Justice for Greenwood, which he founded a year before the community marked the centennial of the massacre in 2021.
鈥淥ne thing I鈥檝e learned from this work, and as a lawyer in general, is that people want justice,鈥� he said. 鈥淧eople want reparations, but people (also) want acknowledgment. They want to be seen. They want people to understand that something happened to them and their family, and they want an apology.鈥�
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Aaron Morrison is the race and ethnicity news editor at AP.
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