Attorneys for an Oklahoma community bank succeeded in convincing a judge to excise two paragraphs referencing the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre from a redlining consent order.
Still, in an order filed earlier this month, Magistrate Judge Christine Little left the substance of the consent order between the Department of Justice and American Bank of Oklahoma unaltered. The $313.1 million-asset American Bank of Oklahoma in Collinsville remains bound by its
Little, however, agreed to trim the paragraphs to which American Bank of Oklahoma had strenuously objected. While describing them as "historically and technically accurate," Little deemed them "clearly not essential or important to the determination of the plaintiff's specific claims involving lending practices a century later."
Though American Bank of Oklahoma denied wrongdoing, it agreed to the consent order in August to settle the government's claims it redlined majority Black and Hispanic census tracts in a lending area comprising Osage, Rogers, Tulsa and Wagoner counties. However, the bank, which was founded in 1998, objected to references to the June 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre — which involved the looting and burning of Greenwood, a Black business district in the city of Tulsa, by white rioters, as well as the murders of dozens of people. The bank said that the reference to the event in the consent order was irrelevant and inflammatory.
One of the paragraphs, which the judge struck, noted the "majority Black and Hispanic area that ABOK excluded from its assessment area contains the neighborhoods destroyed during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre." The second paragraph included a similar mention.
Joe Landon, CEO of American Bank of Oklahoma, said in a statement earlier this month that Little's ruling "delivered an important message to our customers, employees and community members by making it clear that there is absolutely no connection between our bank and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre."
The references to the massacre in the consent order were "irrelevant, confusing and reputationally harmful," Landon added.
The Department of Justice declined to comment. In court filings, the DOJ argued redlining and discrimination are deeply rooted in history. "Areas that are redlined by lenders are frequently areas that have experienced other types of discrimination in the past and this connection is no accident," the DOJ stated in a seven-page brief.
In their brief, American Bank of Oklahoma's attorneys, Andrea Mitchell, a partner at Mitchell Sandler in Washington, D.C., and Craig Buchan, a shareholder at McAfee and Taft in Tulsa, argued that the Tulsa Race Massacre references would serve to undercut the government's goal of expanding American Bank of Oklahoma's services in Black and Hispanic communities.
"They are likely to make it significantly more difficult for the bank to create customer relationships and develop partnerships with community groups in majority Black and Hispanic census tracts in the Tulsa lending area as required under the proposed consent order," Mitchell and Buchan wrote.
With the controversy resolved, American Bank of Oklahoma is "fully committed to launching new lending and financial education initiatives to assist the residents of North and Northeast Tulsa," Landon stated. "We look forward to forging new partnerships in those communities."
