Tulsa Mayor Unveils Staggering $100M Reparations Plan
The very 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.
Mayor Monroe Nichols revealed 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 advancement for north Tulsans.
Of that cash, $24 million will approach housing and own a home for the descendants of the attack that killed as numerous as 300 black people and razed 35 blocks, according to Public Radio Tulsa.
Another $21 million will fund land acquisition, scholarship financing and financial advancement for the blighted north Tulsa neighborhood, and a massive $60 million will approach cultural preservation to enhance structures in the when flourishing Greenwood community.
'For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city's history,' Nichols stated at an event commemorating Race Massacre Observance Day.
'The massacre was hidden from history books, just 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 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 old.
Mayor Monroe Nichols announced on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust comprising private funds to deal with issues including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic advancement for north Tulsans
His plan does not consist of direct money payments to the last known survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle (left) and Viola Fletcher (best), who are 110 and 111 years old. They are visualized in 2021
They had actually been defending reparations for years, and previously this year their attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations plan need to consist of direct payments to the two survivors along with a victim's settlement fund for exceptional 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 claimants 'do not have unrestricted rights to settlement.'
The judgment was then maintained by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, dampening racial justice advocates' hopes that the city would ever make monetary amends.
But after taking office previously this year, Nichols said he evaluated previous proposals from regional neighborhood organizations like Justice for Greenwood.
He then discussed his strategy with the Tulsa City Council and descendants of the massacre victims.
'What we wanted to do was discover a method which we might take in a variety of these recommendations, so that it's reflective of the descendant community, of the folks that brought forth some suggestions,' Nichols said as he also vowed to continue to browse for mass graves believed to consist of victims of the massacre and release 45,000 previously classified city records.
No part of his strategy would require city council approval, the mayor noted, and any fundraising would be performed by an executive director whose salary will be spent for by personal funding.
A Board of Trustees would also identify how to distribute the funds.
Still, the city board would have to license the transfer of any city residential or commercial property to the trust, something the mayor stated was highly most likely.
People take images at a Black Wall Street mural in the historic Greenwood neighborhood
He described that one of the points that actually stuck to him in these conversations was the damage of not simply 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 just something from North Tulsa or the black neighborhood. It actually robbed Tulsa of a financial future that would have equaled 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 included his remarks to the Times. 'That would have made us a financial juggernaut and would have most likely made the city double in size.'
Many at Sunday's event said they supported the plan, although it does not consist of money payments to the two elderly survivors of the attack.
As lots of as 300 black individuals were killed in the 1921 Massacre, which razed 35 blocks in the then-prosperous Greenwood area
The community was when filled with dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and supermarket before it was burned down
Chief Egunwale Amusan, a survivor descendant, for example, stated the he has worked for half his life to get reparations.
'If [my grandfather] had actually been here today, it most likely 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 taxi company in Greenwood that were damaged, meanwhile, acknowledged the political difficulty of giving money payments to descendants.
But at the very same time, she questioned how much of her family'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 taken away.'
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 when a center of commerce
The violence in 1921 appeared after a white woman told cops that a black male had gotten her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa commercial structure on May 30, 1921.
The following day, authorities jailed the man, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had attempted to attack the lady. White individuals surrounded the courthouse, requiring the man be turned over.
World War One veterans were among black men who went to the court house to deal with the mob. A white male attempted to disarm a black veteran and a shot called out, touching off further 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 individuals were deputized by authorities and advised to shoot the black homeowners.
No one was ever charged in the violence, which the federal government now classifies as a 'coordinated military-style attack' by white residents, and not the work of a rowdy mob.
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