The very first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has actually unveiled an enthusiastic reparations plan that would see more than $100 million bought the descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
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Mayor Monroe Nichols revealed on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust comprising private funds to deal with concerns including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and financial development for north Tulsans.

Of that money, $24 million will approach housing and home ownership for the descendants of the attack that killed as many as 300 black people and razed 35 blocks, according to Tulsa.

Another $21 million will money land acquisition, scholarship funding and financial advancement for the blighted north Tulsa neighborhood, and a tremendous $60 million will go toward cultural conservation to improve structures in the when thriving Greenwood community.

'For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has actually been a stain on our city's history,' Nichols said at an event commemorating Race Massacre Observance Day.

'The massacre was hidden from history books, just to be followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a highway built to choke off financial vigor and the perpetual underinvestment of regional, state and federal governments.

'Now it's time to take the next huge actions to bring back.'

But the proposal will not include direct cash payments to the last known survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, who are 110 and 111 years of ages.

Mayor Monroe Nichols revealed on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust consisting of private funds to resolve problems consisting of housing, scholarships, land acquisition and financial development for north Tulsans

His plan does not consist of direct cash payments to the last known survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle (left) and Viola Fletcher (best), who are 110 and 111 years of ages. They are envisioned in 2021

They had actually been battling for reparations for years, and earlier this year their lawyer Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations plan should consist of direct payments to the two survivors as well as a victim's payment fund for exceptional claims.

However, a lawsuit Solomon-Simmons - who likewise established the group Justice for Greenwood - was struck down in 2023 by an Oklahoma judge who stated the claimants 'don't have endless rights to settlement.'

The judgment was then supported by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2015, dampening racial justice supporters' hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.

But after taking workplace earlier this year, Nichols stated he evaluated previous propositions from regional community organizations like Justice for Greenwood.

He then discussed his plan with the Tulsa City board and descendants of the massacre victims.

'What we desired to do was discover a method in which we might take in a number of these suggestions, so that it's reflective of the descendant neighborhood, of the folks that produced some recommendations,' Nichols said as he also promised to continue to look for mass graves thought to include victims of the massacre and release 45,000 formerly classified city records.

No part of his plan would need city council approval, the mayor kept in mind, and any fundraising would be performed by an executive director whose wage will be paid for by private funding.

A Board of Trustees would also identify how to disperse the funds.

Still, the city board would have to license the transfer of any city residential or commercial property to the trust, something the mayor stated was highly likely.

People take images at a Black Wall Street mural in the historical Greenwood area

He discussed that a person of the points that actually stuck to him in these discussions was the damage of not just what Greenwood was - with its dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery stores - however what it could have been.

'The Greenwood District at its height was a center of commerce,' he told the Associated Press. 'So what was lost was not simply something from North Tulsa or the black neighborhood. It really robbed Tulsa of a financial future that would have matched anywhere else worldwide.'

'You would have had the center of oil wealth here and the center of black wealth here at the very same time,' he included his remarks to the Times. 'That would have made us an economic juggernaut and would have most likely made the city double in size.'

Many at Sunday's event stated they supported the plan, although it does not consist of cash payments to the 2 senior survivors of the attack.

As many as 300 black people were eliminated in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which razed 35 blocks in the then-prosperous Greenwood area

The neighborhood was as soon as filled with dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and supermarket before it was burned down

Chief Egunwale Amusan, a survivor descendant, for example, said the he has worked for half his life to get reparations.

'If [my grandfather] had been here today, it probably would have been the most restorative day of his life,' he told Public Radio Tulsa.

Jacqueline Weary, a granddaughter of massacre survivor John R. Emerson, Sr., who owned a hotel and taxi company in Greenwood that were destroyed, meanwhile, acknowledged the political problem of giving money payments to descendants.

But at the same time, she wondered just how much of her family's wealth was lost in the violence.

'If Greenwood was still there, my grandfather would still have his hotel,' stated Weary, 65.

'It truly was our inheritance, and it was actually taken away.'

A group of black were marched past the corner of second and Main Streets in Tulsa, under armed guard during the Tulsa Race Massacre on June 1, 1921

Nichols stated the area was once a center of commerce

The violence in 1921 emerged after a white lady told authorities that a black man had gotten her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa commercial building on May 30, 1921.

The following day, authorities detained the man, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had attempted to attack the lady. White individuals surrounded the courthouse, demanding the man be handed over.

World War One veterans were among black men who went to the courthouse to deal with the mob. A white man tried to deactivate a black veteran and a shot called out, touching off further violence.

White people then robbed and burned buildings and dragged the black people from their beds and beat them, according to historic accounts.

The white people were deputized by authorities and advised to shoot the black locals.

Nobody was ever charged in the violence, which the federal government now classifies as a 'collaborated military-style attack' by white citizens, and not the work of an unruly mob.