Suzette Malveaux’s Scholarship Cited in Justice Department Report The report on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre relied on Professor Malveaux as an expert and cited her research regarding the massacre.

By Law Communications
January 23, 2025

On January 11, 2025, the Department of Justice released its report on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, when from May 31 – June 1, 1921, white Tulsans attacked and destroyed the prosperous Black community of Greenwood, Oklahoma, often referred to as “Black Wall Street.” During the massacre, hundreds of Black residents were murdered, their businesses and homes burned to the ground, and their money and personal property stolen.  The Report is the “first full accounting of the massacre undertaken by the Department of Justice.”

Washington and Lee law professor Suzette Malveaux was consulted by the Justice Department team as an expert in its Review and Evaluation taken pursuant to the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.  The report cites Professor Malveaux’s 2022 article published in the Boston University Law Review, “A Taxonomy of Silencing: The Law’s 100-Year Suppression of the Tulsa Race Massacre.”

In the article, Professor Malveaux examines the ways in which the law itself has been used to obstruct a full understanding of the massacre and to prevent accountability for those responsible for the death and destruction.

“The law has morphed over time to mute the stories and squash the resilience of the survivors: from the crushing use of violence and intimidation to destroy Black Tulsa; to the antiseptic use of zoning regulations, segregation mandates, urban renewal policies, and systemic discrimination to prevent rebuilding; to the cramped use of the statute of limitations to escape accountability; to the deceptive use of antidiscrimination law in public schools to quash meaningful discourse about the Tulsa Race Massacre itself. There is a through line of silencing that goes from 1921 to the present, with law leading the way,” writes Malveaux.

At the direction of the former Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, a team of career lawyers and investigators from the Emmett Till Cold Case Unit of the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division for the DOJ conducted the review. The department’s report, available online, concludes that, had today’s more robust civil rights laws been in effect in 1921, federal prosecutors could have pursued hate crime charges against the massacre’s perpetrators, including both public officials and private citizens. The report also notes that, even if surviving perpetrators were still living, the statute of limitations has expired for the federal civil rights criminal offenses committed during the massacre.

Professor Malveaux joined W&L Law in 2024 as the Roger D. Groot Professor of Law. She previously taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she was the Moses Lasky Professor of Law and Director of the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law. She has taught Civil Procedure, Complex Litigation, Employment Discrimination, Civil Rights, and Constitutional Law for over two decades. Her scholarship explores the intersection of civil rights and civil procedure, as well as access-to-justice issues.

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