Tulsa's new Black mayor proposes $100M trust to 'repair' impact of 1921 Race Massacre

TULSA, Okla. -- Tulsa's caller politician connected Sunday projected a $100 cardinal backstage spot arsenic portion of a reparations program to springiness descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre scholarships and lodging assistance successful a city-backed bid to marque amends for 1 of the worst radical attacks successful U.S. history.

The program by Mayor Monroe Nichols, the archetypal Black politician of Oklahoma's second-largest city, would not supply nonstop currency payments to descendants oregon the past 2 centenarian survivors of the onslaught that killed arsenic galore arsenic 300 Black people. He made the announcement astatine the Greenwood Cultural Center, located successful the once-thriving territory of North Tulsa that was destroyed by a achromatic mob.

Nichols said helium does not usage the word reparations, which helium calls politically charged, characterizing his sweeping program alternatively arsenic a “road to repair.”

“For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain connected our city's history,” Nichols said Sunday aft receiving a lasting ovation from respective 100 people. “The massacre was hidden from past books, lone to beryllium followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a road built to choke disconnected economical vitality and the perpetual underinvestment of local, authorities and national governments.

“Now it's clip to instrumentality the adjacent large steps to restore.”

Nichols said the connection wouldn't necessitate metropolis assembly approval, though the assembly would request to authorize the transportation of immoderate metropolis spot to the trust, thing helium said was highly likely.

The backstage charitable spot would beryllium created with a extremity to unafraid $105 cardinal successful assets, with astir of the backing either secured oregon committed by June 1, 2026. Although details would beryllium developed implicit the adjacent twelvemonth by an enforcement manager and a committee of managers, the program calls for the bulk of the funding, $60 million, to spell toward improving buildings and revitalizing the city's northbound side.

“The Greenwood District astatine its tallness was a halfway of commerce,” Nichols said successful a telephone interview. “So what was mislaid was not conscionable thing from North Tulsa oregon the Black community. It really robbed Tulsa of an economical aboriginal that would person rivaled anyplace other successful the world."

Nichols' connection follows an enforcement bid helium signed earlier this twelvemonth recognizing June 1 arsenic Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day, an authoritative metropolis holiday. Events Sunday successful the Greenwood District included a picnic for families, worship services and an evening candlelight vigil.

Nichols besides realizes the existent nationalist governmental climate, peculiarly President Trump's sweeping assault connected diversity, equity and inclusion programs, poses challenging governmental crosswinds.

“The information that this lines up with a broader nationalist speech is simply a pugnacious environment,” Nichols admitted, “but it doesn't alteration the enactment we person to do.”

Jacqueline Weary, is simply a granddaughter of massacre subsister John R. Emerson, Sr., who owned a edifice and cab institution successful Greenwood that were destroyed. She acknowledged the governmental trouble of giving currency payments to descendants. But astatine the aforesaid time, she wondered however overmuch of her family's wealthiness was mislaid successful the violence.

“If Greenwood was inactive there, my gramps would inactive person his hotel,” said Weary, 65. “It rightfully was our inheritance, and it was virtually taken away.”

Tulsa is not the archetypal U.S. metropolis to research reparations. The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, was the first U.S. metropolis to marque reparations disposable to its Black residents for past discrimination, offering qualifying households $25,000 for location repairs, down payments connected property, and involvement oregon precocious penalties connected spot successful the city. The backing for the programme came from taxes connected the merchantability of recreational marijuana.

Other communities and organizations that person considered providing reparations scope from the authorities of California to cities including Amherst, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; Asheville, North Carolina; and Iowa City, Iowa; spiritual denominations similar the Episcopal Church; and salient colleges similar Georgetown University successful Washington.

In Tulsa, determination are lone 2 surviving survivors of the Race Massacre, some of whom are 110 years old: Leslie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher. The women, some of whom were successful attendance connected Sunday, received nonstop fiscal compensation from some a Tulsa-based nonprofit and a New York-based philanthropic organization, but person not received immoderate recompense from the metropolis oregon state.

Damario Solomon-Simmons, an lawyer for the survivors and the laminitis of the Justice for Greenwood Foundation, said earlier this twelvemonth that immoderate reparations program should see nonstop payments to Randle and Fletcher and a victims' compensation money for outstanding claims.

A suit filed by Solomon-Simmons connected behalf of the survivors was rejected by the Oklahoma Supreme Court past year, dampening radical justness advocates' hopes that the metropolis would ever marque fiscal amends.