In “Redeem a Nation,” attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons takes readers inside the final, exhausting, and ingenious legal battle for the last living centenarian survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
Redeem a Nation | Damario Solomon-Simmons | Storehouse Voices (400 pages)
Before the most important hearing of his career, Damario Solomon-Simmons slipped away to the restroom alone.
In the courtroom, his clients were already waiting in the front row: 107-year-old Lessie Benningfield “Mother” Randle, 107-year-old Viola “Mother” Fletcher, and 101-year-old Hughes Van Ellis, known as “Uncle Redd.” They were among the oldest people in America, demanding an accounting for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
The law had already turned them away once. The history books had ignored them for decades. Yet there Solomon-Simmons stood, running through his pretrial ritual of prayers to God, his ancestors, and civil rights icons like Thurgood Marshall. I am standing on your shoulders, he whispered. He was walking into a courtroom to reopen a chapter the state of Oklahoma considered permanently closed.
Redeem a Nation is at once a legal memoir, historical reckoning, and blueprint for advocacy in the face of institutional limits. Like Grisham at his best, Solomon-Simmons makes procedural maneuvering feel high-stakes and deeply human, ultimately raising a profound question: What happens when the law acknowledges massive harm yet refuses meaningful repair?
The Tulsa Race Massacre was not a riot; it was a state-sponsored atrocity. City authorities deputized white residents and armed them. The National Guard arrived and joined the killing and looting rather than stopping it. In the aftermath, city officials conspired to prosecute Black leaders as the instigators. By the time the violence subsided, Greenwood — the most prosperous Black community in America — had been reduced to ash. In roughly thirty-six hours, more than ten thousand people were left homeless, and untold millions in generational wealth, businesses, and real estate were gone. More than a century later, these three survivors were standing in the gap to demand a final accounting.
Finding a Different Door
Because the ultimate legal outcome of this battle is a matter of public record, Redeem a Nation shouldn’t work as a thriller. Yet Solomon-Simmons turns a century-old legal stalemate into a procedural page-turner.
He was facing an absolute uphill battle: a high-profile 2003 federal case led by legal giants Charles Ogletree and Johnnie Cochran had already been dismissed on statute of limitations grounds, a defeat solidified when the Supreme Court refused to hear it in 2005. To get around this seemingly impassable procedural wall, Solomon-Simmons had to find a different door.
Instead of filing another federal civil rights claim, he launched a state action rooted in an ingenious interpretation of Oklahoma’s public nuisance law. His argument was elegant: a standard injury has a time limit, but a public nuisance does not expire. It exists until it is abated (fixed).
Because the City of Tulsa itself had acknowledged that the socioeconomic disparities caused by the massacre persist to this day, Solomon-Simmons argued the harm was ongoing. Ordinarily, extended discussions of legal doctrine are where narrative momentum goes to die. Here, public nuisance law becomes a high-stakes end-run; a structural skeleton key used to unlock a courtroom that had been dead-bolted shut for a century.
The Case Against Time
But a brilliant legal theory is nothing without time to litigate it, and the clock was racing. The plaintiffs were not historical abstractions; they were living centenarians.
Not an easy task. This logistical challenge, to me, is as riveting and heroic as the courtroom drama. Here’s one example: In May 2021, weeks before the massacre’s centennial, Solomon-Simmons pulled together a trip to Washington, D.C., for Mother Fletcher and Uncle Redd to testify before a House Judiciary subcommittee. Transporting centenarian survivors and their caregivers was a massive, $15,000 bill and logistical challenge. Violent storms delayed their departure from Tulsa, forcing Solomon-Simmons and Mother Fletcher to split from their seven-person team and scramble onto a three-seat flight through Charlotte.
They finally touched down in D.C. at midnight without their luggage. Facing a 10:00 a.m. televised congressional hearing, Solomon-Simmons’s wife, Mia, waited for the rest of the team to arrive at 3:00 a.m., camped out at a local Target before sunrise to buy new clothes, and personally helped a 107-year-old Mother Fletcher dress for Capitol Hill.
To scale the legal mountain, Solomon-Simmons needed reinforcements. A connection from famed civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson linked him with Schulte Roth & Zabel, a corporate powerhouse law firm. Bill Zabel — the legal legend who wrote the winning brief in Loving v. Virginia — heard Solomon-Simmons speak and immediately offered the resources of dozens of attorneys. For a local nonprofit running on fumes, it was a massive lifeline.
This powerful alliance allowed Solomon-Simmons to fully litigate the true scope of the disaster and reframe the word reparations, which has become politically radioactive. He strips the concept back to basic tort law: if a driver causes an accident, they pay to restore the vehicle and the victim. It is a mechanical, everyday legal function. We happily embrace reparations every day in America if we just call them insurance claims and settlements.
The Work Beyond the Courtroom
Some of the most affecting parts of Redeem a Nation happen outside the courtroom. Solomon-Simmons lays bare the grueling, unglamorous reality of modern advocacy: the endless loop of media interviews, the community fundraising, and the heavy emotional labor of supporting elderly clients through years of systemic stalling. At one point, he admits he did so many podcasts he felt like an AI chatbot repeating the same phrases.
This work connects directly to the landscape of Tulsa today. Through his grassroots foundation, Justice for Greenwood, the struggle has evolved from a closed legal case into an ongoing, multi-front campaign for community revitalization, descendants’ genealogy tracking, and historic preservation. North Tulsa’s life expectancy still runs eleven years below the white side of town, and poverty rates remain twice as high. These aren’t just background statistics; they are his primary evidence. They are proof that, a century later, Greenwood is still burning and that the organization’s work is far from finished.
Redefining Victory
Readers looking for a triumphant, Hollywood-style courtroom victory won’t find it here. But that is exactly what makes the book a masterclass in persistence.
Redeem a Nation is less about winning a specific final judgment and more about redefining what success looks like when facing biased institutions. It recalls a moment when a young Solomon-Simmons watched his mentor, Charles Ogletree, lose an earlier iteration of this fight. Ogletree told him:
“Bad judgments don’t end movements. Courts may turn us away, but justice isn’t theirs to deny. Our job is to keep pressing until the law catches up with the truth.”
Legal outcomes matter, but public awareness, historical truth, and bearing witness matter just as much. Movements can succeed even when the courts have spoken and lawsuits fail. Redeem a Nation is an essential blueprint for how to keep pressing forward long after the final gavel falls.
Thanks to NetGalley and Storehouse Voices for the ARC.