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The very first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has revealed an ambitious reparations plan that would see more than $100 million bought the descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Mayor Monroe Nichols announced on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust making up private funds to address concerns consisting of housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic development for north Tulsans.

Of that money, $24 million will approach housing and home ownership for the descendants of the attack that eliminated as many as 300 black individuals and took down 35 blocks, according to Public Radio Tulsa.

Another $21 million will fund land acquisition, scholarship funding and economic development for the blighted north Tulsa community, and a tremendous $60 million will approach cultural preservation to improve structures in the once thriving Greenwood neighborhood.

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

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

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

But the proposition will not consist of direct money payments to the last recognized survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, who are 110 and 111 years old.

Mayor Monroe Nichols announced on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust making up personal funds to attend to problems consisting of housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic development for north Tulsans

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

They had been battling for reparations for several years, and previously this year their lawyer 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 outstanding 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 settlement.'

The ruling was then promoted by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, dampening racial hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.

But after taking office earlier this year, Nichols stated he evaluated previous proposals 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 find a way in which we might take in a number of these recommendations, so that it's reflective of the descendant community, of the folks that produced some recommendations,' Nichols stated as he likewise swore to continue to look 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 board approval, the mayor noted, and any fundraising would be carried out by an executive director whose wage will be spent for by personal financing.

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

Still, the city board would need to authorize the transfer of any city residential or commercial property to the trust, something the mayor said was extremely most likely.

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

He explained that a person of the points that really stuck with him in these discussions was the damage of not just what Greenwood was - with its restaurants, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery shops - but what it might 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 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 same time,' he included his remarks to the Times. 'That would have made us a financial juggernaut and would have probably made the city double in size.'

Many at Sunday's event stated they supported the strategy, even though it does not include cash payments to the 2 senior survivors of the attack.

As numerous as 300 black people were killed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which took down 35 blocks in the then-prosperous Greenwood area

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 instance, said the he has worked for half his life to get reparations.

'If [my grandpa] had been here today, it probably would have been the most corrective 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 damaged, meanwhile, acknowledged the political problem of offering cash payments to descendants.

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

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

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

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

Nichols said the area was as soon as a center of commerce

The violence in 1921 appeared after a white lady informed authorities that a black guy had grabbed her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa commercial structure on May 30, 1921.

The following day, authorities detained the male, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had tried to attack the lady. White people surrounded the courthouse, demanding the man be turned over.

World War One veterans were amongst black men who went to the court house to deal with the mob. A white man attempted to deactivate a black veteran and a shot called out, touching off even more violence.

White people then looted and burned structures and dragged the black individuals from their beds and beat them, according to historic accounts.

The white individuals were deputized by authorities and instructed to shoot the black locals.

Nobody was ever charged in the violence, which the federal government now categorizes as a 'collaborated military-style attack' by white people, and not the work of a rowdy mob.
lewrockwell.com