The families of the only two known remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and detectives from the Department of Justice met for the first time as a federal review continues into a white mob's attack on the city's wealthy Greenwood section, which at the time was known as "Black Wall Street." 

"Everyone wants actual accountability of the massacre," the survivors' attorney, Damario Solomon-Simmons, said during a press conference Thursday afternoon, after he and Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, met with the detectives, reports ABC News.

"They want those who perpetrated this harm that started in 1921 and continues to today, to be held accountable."

According to the DOJ, the remaining living survivors of the Oklahoma attacks are Viola Fletcher, known as "Mother Fletcher" and Lessie Benningfield Randle, known as "Mother Randle," both of whom are over 100 years old. 

Another long-lived survivor, Hugh Van Ellis, or "Uncle Red" died on Oct. 9, 2023, at the age of 102. 

The three sued Tulsa in 2020 for reparations over the destruction of the community. 

Thursday's meeting with the cold case detectives was held weeks after the DOJ and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced the first federal review.

Clarke, when announcing the probe, called the crime "one of the deadliest episodes of mass racial violence in this nation's history."

She referenced the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, a federal law passed in 2008 authorizing the government to reopen civil rights crimes that took place on or before Dec. 31, 1979, that resulted in deaths. 

"The trial of Emmett Till’s killers is one of the most notorious examples of racial injustice common throughout the South — and across the entire country — in the Jim Crow era," said Clarke. 

Till, 14, was kidnapped and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, who admitted in 1956 to killing him, were acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury.

The catalyst for the Tulsa massacre, she added, mirrored Till's murder, as it was sparked by claims that a young Black man had engaged inappropriately with a white woman. 

Clarke said there is no expectation that anyone remains alive who participated in the 103-year-old massacre and who could face prosecution. However, the review acknowledges that the "descendants of the survivors, and the victims, continue to bear the trauma of this act of racial terrorism."

Solomon-Simmons said the two survivors could not attend Thursday's conference, but Randle's granddaughter and Fletcher's son were present for his reading of their joint statement. 

"We desperately needed this federal lifeline amid the state's and city's ongoing effort to gaslight us into our graves," their statement said.

"To this day, secrets about the atrocity that we fled remain hidden in long-suppressed government documents and corporate records in historical archives and concealed in insurance company records. Thanks to the DOJ review, our nation will have the opportunity for the first time to know the truth about the physical, despicable plot to put an affluent Black community 'in its place.'"

• 100 Years Later, Last Survivors Mark Race Massacre in Tulsa
• WH Dodges on Whether Tulsa Massacre Survivors Should Get Reparations