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The first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has unveiled an enthusiastic reparations prepare 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 consisting of personal funds to resolve concerns including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and financial advancement for north Tulsans.

Of that cash, $24 million will go towards housing and home ownership for the descendants of the attack that killed as many as 300 black individuals and razed 35 blocks, according to Public Radio Tulsa.

Another $21 million will money land acquisition, scholarship financing and financial advancement for the blighted north Tulsa neighborhood, and a massive $60 million will go toward cultural preservation to enhance structures in the when prosperous Greenwood neighborhood.

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

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

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

But the proposition will not consist of 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 announced on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust consisting of personal funds to attend to concerns consisting of housing, scholarships, land acquisition and financial development for north Tulsans

His plan does not include direct money payments to the last recognized survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle (left) and Viola Fletcher (best), who are 110 and 111 years old. They are imagined in 2021

They had actually been defending reparations for several years, and earlier this year their attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations plan need to include direct payments to the 2 survivors in addition to a victim's payment fund for exceptional claims.

However, a suit Solomon-Simmons - who also established the group Justice for Greenwood - was struck down in 2023 by an Oklahoma judge who stated the complaintants 'do not have limitless rights to compensation.'

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

But after taking office earlier this year, Nichols stated he examined previous propositions from local neighborhood companies 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 find a method which we could take in a number of these recommendations, so that it's reflective of the descendant community, of the folks that produced some suggestions,' Nichols stated as he also pledged to continue to browse for mass graves believed to contain victims of the massacre and release 45,000 previously categorized city records.

No part of his plan would require city council approval, the mayor noted, and any fundraising would be conducted by an executive director whose wage will be paid for by private funding.

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

Still, the city council would need to license the transfer of any city residential or commercial property to the trust, something the mayor stated was most likely.

People take photos at a Black Wall Street mural in the historic Greenwood community

He described that one of the points that really stuck with him in these discussions was the damage of not just what Greenwood was - with its dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery shops - but 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 community. It in fact robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have equaled anywhere else on the planet.'

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

Many at Sunday's occasion stated they supported the plan, although it does not include money payments to the 2 elderly survivors of the attack.

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

The neighborhood was when filled with dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery stores before it was burned down

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

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

Jacqueline Weary, a granddaughter of massacre survivor John R. Emerson, Sr., who owned a hotel and cab business in Greenwood that were ruined, meanwhile, acknowledged the political trouble of offering money payments to descendants.

But at the very same time, she questioned how much of her household's wealth was lost in the violence.

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

'It truly was our inheritance, and it was actually eliminated.'

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 said the community was when a center of commerce

The violence in 1921 appeared after a white lady informed cops that a black man had actually grabbed her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa industrial structure on May 30, 1921.

The following day, authorities jailed the guy, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had tried to assault the female. White people surrounded the court house, requiring the male be turned over.

World War One veterans were among black males who went to the court house to deal with the mob. A white man tried to deactivate a black veteran and a shot rang out, touching off even more 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 citizens.

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