Though accounts vary, some historians believe that the teen mistakenly stepped on his accuser's foot in an elevator, causing her to fall, and that she screamed when he tried to catch her.
The survivors' and descendants' lawsuit seeks reparations for the death of family members and the loss of homes and businesses.
Plaintiffs' lawyers, accusing the city and state of participating in a "conspiracy of silence" after the riot, are seeking unspecified financial damages. They also seek several other means of redress, including a declaration that the state grand jury that carried out the first investigation, exonerating all whites, was a fraud, said Michael D. Hausfeld, a leading attorney for the survivors. The lawsuit seeks to have the state establish a new grand jury that would identify people responsible for the riot.
The state has argued that the 11th Amendment, which typically shields states from federal lawsuits, made it immune from the claims. The city says the statute of limitations for a case such as this is two years, making the lawsuit invalid.
"These arguments are past their time and should not go forward," said Oklahoma Assistant Atty. Gen. Wellon Poe. "It could very well end here."
Today's hearing is expected to address only the requests to have the case thrown out. The judge is not expected to deliver a decision immediately. The loser is expected to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver.
Several architects of the case, including Harvard University law professor Charles Ogletree, are key players in the reparations movement for descendants of slaves. Proponents of reparations believe that 246 years of unpaid labor helped the United States become a superpower, and that the economic disparity between whites and blacks today can be traced directly to slavery.
Ogletree compared the Tulsa case to the early work of Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights icon and the first black Supreme Court justice. As a young lawyer, Marshall picked his first cases carefully, pursuing a strategy that resulted in a landmark decision -- Brown vs. the Board of Education, declaring segregation in public schools illegal -- and helped set the stage for the modern civil rights movement, Ogletree said.
"There will be evidence that this problem is far larger than Tulsa," he said. "This is just the tip of the iceberg."
Opponents of reparations see parallels too -- and, as a result, say it is paramount that government officials win the case.
