Alexander v. Oklahoma

Official reports and accounts of the time that viewed the Tulsa Race Riot as a "Negro uprising" were incorrect. Given the history of racial violence against African-Americans in Oklahoma, including numerous lynchings by white mobs, and the breakdown of the rule of law in Tulsa on May 31-June 1, 1921, it is understandable that African-Americans believe[d] they needed to assist Tulsa police in protecting Dick Rowland, an African-American accused of attempting to rape a white woman, against an assembled white mob. The documentation assembled by The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission provides strong evidence that some local municipal and county officials failed to take actions to calm or contain the situation once violence erupted and, in some cases, became participants in the subsequent violence which took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, and even deputized and armed many whites who were part of a mob that killed, looted, and burned down the Greenwood area[.] Okla. Stat. tit. 74 § 8000.1.2 (West 2002).

Regardless of the legal theory relied on, equitable estoppel, equitable tolling, or accrual, the gravamen of Plaintiffs' argument is that they did not and could not know of the City's involvement any sooner. While it is certain that the Commission Report has helped to gather more facts about the Riot, the Court has considerable trouble with the Plaintiffs' assertion that until the Commission issued its report, they were unaware of the City's responsibility for their injury. Dist. Ct. Order at 18.

If, on a motion for judgment on the pleadings, matters outside the pleadings are presented to and not excluded by the court, the motion shall be treated as one for summary judgment and disposed of as provided in Rule 56, and all parties shall be given reasonable opportunity to present all material made pertinent to such a motion by Rule 56. Fed.R.Civ.P.12(c).

Where a party has moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted and matters outside of the pleadings have been presented to the court for consideration, the court must either exclude the material or treat the motion as one for summary judgment. . . .Nichols v. UnitedStates,796 F.2d 361,364(10th Cir. 1986).

A large number of white men . . . broke into a hardware store, a pawnshop, and another place where arms were kept, and armed themselves with guns, revolvers, and ammunition, and in a short while after the firing occurred at the courthouse the streets were full of armed white people. Two or three hundred armed men assembled around the police station and were sent out to different parts of the town ostensibly to guard the town. From that time until about 9 or 10 o'clock the following day there was a great deal of shooting, especially in the negro section of the city, and a number of men were killed. . . . About daylight on the morn [sp] of June 1st, at the sound of a whistle, shooting became rather general and continued for some time. Armed white men, described as traveling in groups of from a dozen to twenty, rounded up the negroes found in the section where the fires were burning and took, or sent, them to the convention hall, where they appear to have been detained. A number of witnesses testified that these groups of white men, many of them wearing police badges and badges indicating they were deputy sheriffs, after removing the negroes from the buildings, went inside the buildings, and, after they left, fires broke out inside the buildings. By 9 o'clock, buildings were burning in every part of the negro section of the city.Redfearn v. American Central Ins. Co.,116 Okla. 137,243 P. 929,929-30(1926).