On May 21, 2021, Professor Lynne Marie Kohm, along with Peyton Farley ('22, pictured below) and Katrina Sumner ('21, via Zoom). presented “Empowering Black Wealth in the Shadow of the Tulsa Race Massacre” at the Tulsa Law Review Symposium remembering the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
Their paper will be published by the Tulsa Law Review this fall.
View their presentation below:
Tulsa University School of Law held the symposium to mark 100 years since the Tulsa Race Massacre, a violent, destructive, tragic event that devastated lives in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, OK in 1921. Professor Kohm, Farley, and Sumner were honored to present our scholarship and excited to help create change.
Their work, entitled “Empowering Black Wealth in the Shadow of the Tulsa Race Massacre,” presents the following:
- A suggestion that the massacre and the wealth destruction that followed present a quintessential example of Black families being prevented from wealth protection and transfer because of the very fact that they possessed wealth. Racial inequality in the early 20th century seemed to manifest its very existence in those events in Tulsa in 1921, as Black wealth was taken and destroyed in hideous acts of violence.
- A fresh approach and a fresh question: Might Wealth Transfer planning for Black families be a solution (albeit a small slice of a solution) to wealth protection and maintenance in achieving racial fairness?
- An examination of how the laws of wealth transfer can work to break cycles of inequality, averting government reliance, to the benefit of strengthening Black families and Black family wealth toward economic command when wise financial and estate planning is supported by the rule of law and made advantageous by and to Black families.
- A proposal that laws of wealth transfer can work to benefit Black family wealth advancement away from racial victimization toward economic equality, growth, and command, arguing that planned Black wealth succession is an opening to an essential doorway of breaking cycles of violence, unfairness, and animosity. Family restoration happens when all families are able to transfer their wealth to the next generation.
About the Student Authors:
Katrina Sumner is a recent graduate of Regent University Law School where she served as a Senior Editor of the Law Review and as a law clerk for the School of Law’s Center for Global Justice. In 2021, she received a top three award in the Law Review’s annual competition for legal scholarship. Prior to law school, Katrina worked for a faith-based, non-profit organization dedicated to serving at-risk children living in difficult environments around the world.
