The first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has revealed an enthusiastic reparations plan that would see more than $100 million invested in 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 personal funds to deal with issues including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic development for north Tulsans.

Of that money, $24 million will go toward housing and home ownership for the descendants of the attack that eliminated as numerous as 300 black people and razed 35 blocks, according to Public Radio Tulsa.

Another $21 million will fund land acquisition, scholarship funding and financial advancement for the blighted north Tulsa community, and a whopping $60 million will go towards cultural conservation to enhance structures in the when flourishing Greenwood area.

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

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

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

But the proposition will not include direct money 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 making up personal funds to resolve problems including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and financial advancement for north Tulsans

His strategy does not include direct cash payments to the last known survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle (left) and Viola Fletcher (best), who are 110 and 111 years old. They are pictured in 2021

They had been defending reparations for years, and earlier this year their attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations prepare need to consist of direct payments to the two survivors in addition to a victim's settlement fund for outstanding claims.

However, a lawsuit Solomon-Simmons - who also established the group Justice for Greenwood - was overruled in 2023 by an Oklahoma judge who declared the complaintants 'do not have limitless rights to settlement.'

The ruling was then upheld by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, moistening racial justice supporters' hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.

But after taking office earlier this year, Nichols stated he reviewed previous propositions from regional community companies like Justice for Greenwood.

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

'What we wished to do was discover a way in which we could take in a number of these suggestions, so that it's reflective of the descendant community, of the folks that came up with some recommendations,' Nichols said as he also swore to continue to search for mass graves believed to consist of victims of the massacre and release 45,000 formerly categorized city records.

No part of his plan would require city council approval, the mayor kept in mind, and any fundraising would be conducted by an executive director whose income will be paid for by personal funding.

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

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

People take pictures at a Black Wall Street mural in the historic Greenwood neighborhood

He explained that one of the points that actually stuck to him in these conversations was the damage of not simply what Greenwood was - with its dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and supermarket - but what it might have been.

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

'You would have had the center of oil wealth here and the center of black wealth here at the exact same time,' he added in 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, despite the fact that it does not consist of cash payments to the two elderly survivors of the attack.

As lots of 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 as soon as filled with dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery stores before it was burned down

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

'If [my grandfather] had been here today, it most likely 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 cab business in Greenwood that were destroyed, meanwhile, acknowledged the political difficulty of offering money payments to descendants.

But at the exact same time, she questioned 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,' stated Weary, 65.

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

A group of black were marched past the corner of 2nd and Main Streets in Tulsa, under armed guard throughout the Tulsa Race Massacre on June 1, 1921

Nichols said the area was once a center of commerce

The violence in 1921 erupted after a white woman informed police that a black man had actually gotten her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa commercial building on May 30, 1921.

The following day, authorities jailed the man, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had actually attempted to assault the woman. White individuals surrounded the court house, demanding the male be handed over.

World War One veterans were among black guys who went to the court house to deal with the mob. A white man attempted to disarm a black veteran and a shot rang out, touching off even more violence.

White people then robbed and burned buildings and dragged the black individuals 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 people, and not the work of an unruly mob.