The first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has unveiled an ambitious reparations plan that would see more than $100 million invested in the descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
Mayor Monroe Nichols announced on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust comprising private funds to address 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 killed as many as 300 black people and razed 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 whopping $60 million will go toward cultural preservation to improve buildings in the once prosperous Greenwood neighborhood.
‘For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has 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, only to be followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a highway built to choke off economic vitality and the perpetual underinvestment of local, state and federal governments.
‘Now it’s time to take the next big steps to restore.’
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 old.
They had been fighting for reparations for years, and earlier this year their attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations plan should include direct payments to the two survivors as well as a victim’s compensation fund for outstanding claims.
However, a lawsuit Solomon-Simmons – who also founded the group Justice for Greenwood – was struck down in 2023 by an Oklahoma judge who declared the claimants ‘don’t have unlimited rights to compensation.’
The ruling was then upheld by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, dampening racial justice advocates’ hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.
But after taking office earlier this year, Nichols said he reviewed previous proposals from local community organizations like Justice for Greenwood.
He then discussed his plan with the Tulsa City Council and descendants of the massacre victims.
‘What we wanted to do was find a way in which we could take in a number of these recommendations, so that it’s reflective of the descendant community, of the folks that brought forth some recommendations,’ Nichols said as he also vowed to continue to search for mass graves believed to contain victims of the massacre and release 45,000 previously classified 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 salary will be paid for by private funding.
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