My 111-Year-Old Client Will Be in Line: Damario Solomon-Simmons on the Tulsa Race Massacre, Reparations, and the 1776 Fund Precedent

Angela Rye’s latest SoloPod opens with two voting rights victories — federal courts rejecting racially gerrymandered maps in both Alabama and South Carolina — then pivots to a conversation with attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons, founder of Justice for Greenwood, legal counsel for the last living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and author of the new book Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America*.

• Reparations is not a radical idea — it’s what America does every day. Damario’s most clarifying argument: when a car accident causes injury and lost wages, you pay for the car, the medical bills, the pain and suffering, and the mental trauma. That’s reparations. America paid reparations to enslavers in 1862 when enslaved people in D.C. were freed. Japanese Americans received reparations. 9/11 victims. Native American nations whose treaties were broken. “This is something this country knows how to do.”

• The Trump 1776 Fund is a precedent to be used. Damario’s bold strategic move: if the government is setting up a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people it “weaponized,” then his 111-year-old client Mother Lessie Benfield Randall — last known living survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre — is filing an application. “If anyone deserves money from weaponization of government, a lady who suffered a massacre 105 years ago should be in line.”

• Damario has been in this fight for nearly 30 years — since 1997, when a professor at the University of Oklahoma humiliated him in class for saying the Tulsa Race Massacre didn’t happen. He was raised in Greenwood. He didn’t know. That embarrassment lit the fire that has defined his entire career. He went on to clerk for the Reparations Coordinating Committee, work with Charles Ogletree, Johnny Cochran, and Michelle Roberts representing 100+ Tulsa survivors — and now he is down to one

• Mother Lessie Benfield Randall is 111 years old and still seeking justice. Of all the survivors Damario has walked with, he is now down to one. He and Mother Randall will be together in person with Angela Rye on Friday. “I’m trying to do everything I can to get her justice before she passes away. That’s why the book is an extension of the work.”

• In the darkest moments, Greenwood was built. When asked what to tell people who feel like giving up, Damario’s answer was historical: “In a moment just like this — a worse moment probably — Greenwood was created. Black fraternities and sororities were created. Black church denominations were created. How? The greatest amount of community love, the greatest amount of mutual aid, the greatest amount of coming together.” His closing message, borrowed from jazz legend and Tulsa massacre survivor Hal Singer, who fought from his deathbed: “No matter what, we must fight for our rights and our dignity.”

“No matter what may happen in the end, we must always fight for our rights and our dignity.”
— Hal Singer, Tulsa Massacre survivor (1919–2020), quoted by Damario Solomon-Simmons
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