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Op-Ed Contributor

In Tulsa ‘Not Guilty’ Verdict, Echoes of Historic Injustice

The Rev. Joey Crutcher, center, the father of Terence Crutcher, who was killed last year by Betty Shelby, a police officer.Credit...Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press

I gathered with other black residents of Tulsa, Okla., last Wednesday night outside the county courthouse to hear a disappointing yet predictable verdict: Betty Shelby had been found not guilty of first-degree manslaughter in the police killing of Terence Crutcher.

Ms. Shelby, who is white, shot and killed Mr. Crutcher, who was black, during the course of a routine traffic stop in September 2016. Mr. Crutcher was unarmed, but Ms. Shelby said she shot because she feared for her life when she saw him reach into his car. In what has become a familiar pattern when law enforcement officers are accused of deadly misconduct, she walked free.

Once news of the decision spread among the crowd gathered outside, the small band of Shelby supporters disbanded and scurried off. Mr. Crutcher’s parents and sister walked out of the courthouse with their heads bowed. The lawyers for the Crutcher family visibly bristled, perhaps with a sense of helplessness, or with nagging regret that they could have perhaps done more. And those of us who had been waiting outside sat stultified, unable to feel surprise.

The next day, Chuck Jordan, the Tulsa police chief, offered little solace, simply announcing that Officer Shelby’s employment was being “evaluated.” Mayor G. T. Bynum addressed a roomful of journalists at City Hall, recalling that black Tulsans long have been the victims of “lawlessness and violence” and delivering a painful reminder that “Tulsans have talked about addressing racial disparity for 100 years but haven’t succeeded.”

Shortly after, the Morning Star Baptist Church in Tulsa hosted the Crutcher family news conference. The family, flanked by lawyers, activists and clergy members, listened to the Rev. Dr. Ray Owens, pastor of Tulsa’s historic Metropolitan Baptist Church, deliver what has become a familiar refrain after the acquittals of officers charged in the deaths of unarmed African-Americans: “We refuse to rest until justice is served.”

But for many black Tulsans, it’s impossible to remember a time when the rest that comes with true justice was available to us. Last week’s verdict was an echo of an injustice dating back almost a century ago.

During the early 20th century, North Tulsa was home to “Black Wall Street” or “Little Africa,” a community representing one of the country’s highest concentrations of black success, charting its own course and reinvesting in itself.

But on May 30, 1921, a simple tripping accident between a black shoeshine boy and a white female elevator operator was intentionally misinterpreted as assault. This provided the pretext for the next day’s actions: White residents burned Black Wall Street to the ground. Over 5,000 black residents were arrested, hundreds were killed, and even more were admitted to hospitals. The fire engulfed 1,256 homes, 191 commercial sites, some churches and even schools. The memory of the hope that Little Africa once offered is the heavy anchor that black Tulsans carry with them daily. The once-booming district now holds nostalgia and indefinitely deferred dreams.

This history did not desensitize black Tulsans to Mr. Crutcher’s killing. Rather, it informed our reaction to it, as history has informed the anguish of black residents of other major cities. These supposedly distinct tragedies are weighed down by local history, which in turn emerges as the broader history of the United States’ treatment of black Americans.

It’s similar to how in 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice’s death at the hands of two Cleveland police officers as he played with a toy gun incited outrage that was intensified by local history. There, during the Hough riots of 1966, four African-Americans were killed and over 50 were injured, triggered devastating, economic harm from which that part of the city still reels and all of black Cleveland still remembers.

Likewise, North Tulsa, where the 1921 attack on Black Wall Street took place, has yet to recover. Residents in the primary ZIP code there have a life expectancy 10.7 years less than residents in a ZIP code that makes up much of the southern part of the city, and 9.2 years less than the entire county.

Tulsa’s black community hoped against hope that the footage of Mr. Crutcher’s last moments, showing him with his hands in the air, would be enough. We dared to believe that somehow the jury would be unpersuaded by Officer Shelby’s claims that she truly feared for her life. Yet again that wasn’t the case.

That’s why, in last week’s verdict — along with this week’s announcement that Shelby has returned to work, and will receive back pay — we heard the screams of the hundreds killed during the Tulsa race riot. Like an echo, we heard the sounds of injustice dating back to 1921, reinforced yet again by the sounds of a jury foreman announcing a consensus about Officer Shelby’s innocence.

For Tulsa, the loudest noise was not the gunshot that Officer Shelby fired. It was not the protesters cheering for Officer Shelby, nor those rallying to the defense of the Crutcher family. The loudest noise was that relatively quiet muttering of “not guilty” and everything it represented. It reverberated along with the bellows of a history that has, for this black community, failed time and time again to deliver the justice we deserve.

Caleb Gayle is a Tulsa native and a joint degree candidate at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

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