As candidates jockey for Black votes, the very least Biden could do is announce support for a federal investigation into the Tulsa massacre

Follow this authorKaren Attiah's opinions

As their earthly time is running out, the survivors have one last ask for repair. “We ask that the United States Department of Justice intervene and open an investigation into the Massacre and do what Oklahoma has never done. It is not too late to do the right thing.”

For decades, the massacre was omitted from Oklahoma history books and public memory. In reporting in and about Tulsa, I learned that beyond reparations for lost property and harm, the plaintiffs and their supporters have long sought to open processes of discovery that would add to the collective understanding of what happened during those dark days. But Tulsa, and now the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, continue to stand in the way.

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The implications of the survivors’ appeal for a federal investigation into the massacre are significant, and should be taken seriously by Biden as well as whoever else seeks the presidency in November. As the campaign heats up and candidates jockey for Black votes, the very least the Biden-Harris administration could do is announce support for a federal investigation into the Tulsa massacre.

Cornell William Brooks, a former Justice Department civil rights lawyer and former head of the NAACP, told me the there have been many instances where the DOJ has stepped in when states have declined, or not completed, investigations of racialized murder. None, though, has been on the scale of Tulsa.

One was the case of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights workers who were murdered in Mississippi in 1964. The Justice Department started an investigation into their murders under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007, which states that governmental justice entities should “expeditiously investigate unsolved civil rights murders,” and “provide all the resources necessary to ensure timely and thorough investigations in the cases involved.” Brooks also cited federal investigations into the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge.

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In a recent paper titled “Normalizing Reparations,” Brooks and Harvard colleague Linda Bilmes argue that the federal government........

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