1921 Race Riot Indictment Against WNY Publisher Being Dismissed

By: An 86-year-old indictment against a former Buffalo newspaper publisher caught up in an infamous race riot is being dismissed today in Oklahoma.

A.J. Smitherman was 1 of scores of black men who were indicted following the 1921 riot in Tulsa that left dozens of people dead and the city's black neighborhood in ruins.

Smitherman was the publisher of a black-oriented newspaper in Tulsa when the riots erupted after a group of black men tried to prevent a lynching. Afterward, he moved out of Oklahoma and lived in Massachusetts for a time before setting in Buffalo in 1925.

There he started another newspaper and was a leader in the city's black community before his death in 1961 at age 77.

University at Buffalo historian Barbara Seals Nevergold brought Smitherman?s story to the attention of Tulsa District Attorney Tim Harris. The DA reviewed the case and found that no evidence against Smitherman was ever presented and the case was never prosecuted.

Harris is dismissing the indictment during a ceremonial court hearing scheduled for today.