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1 Tulsa Mayor Unveils Staggering $100M Reparations Plan

The first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has actually revealed an ambitious reparations plan that would see more than $100 million bought the descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
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Mayor Monroe Nichols announced on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust comprising private funds to deal with issues consisting of housing, scholarships, land acquisition and financial advancement for north Tulsans.

Of that money, $24 million will go toward housing and own a home for the descendants of the attack that killed as lots of as 300 black individuals and razed 35 blocks, according to Public Radio Tulsa.

Another $21 million will money land acquisition, scholarship funding and financial development for the blighted north Tulsa neighborhood, and a tremendous $60 million will go toward cultural preservation to enhance buildings 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 occasion celebrating Race Massacre Observance Day.

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

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

But the proposal will not include direct money payments to the last recognized 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 comprising private funds to resolve issues including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and financial advancement for north Tulsans

His plan does not include 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 envisioned in 2021

They had actually been combating for reparations for several years, and earlier this year their lawyer Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations plan should include direct payments to the 2 survivors in addition to a victim's payment 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 plaintiffs 'do not have unlimited rights to payment.'

The ruling was then maintained by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2015, dampening racial justice supporters' hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.

But after taking workplace previously this year, Nichols said he evaluated previous proposals from local community organizations like Justice for Greenwood.

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

'What we wanted to do was discover a way in which we might take in a number of these recommendations, so that it's reflective of the descendant neighborhood, of the folks that brought forth some recommendations,' Nichols said as he likewise promised to continue to look for mass graves thought to consist of victims of the massacre and release 45,000 formerly categorized city records.
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No part of his strategy would need city council approval, the mayor noted, and any fundraising would be conducted by an executive director whose income will be paid for by personal financing.

A Board of Trustees would also determine how to disperse the funds.

Still, the city council would have 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 historical Greenwood neighborhood

He explained that one of the points that truly stuck with him in these discussions was the destruction of not just what Greenwood was - with its dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery shops - 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 neighborhood. It actually robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have measured up to anywhere else in the world.'

'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 most likely made the city double in size.'

Many at Sunday's event said they supported the strategy, although it does not consist of money payments to the two senior survivors of the attack.

As numerous as 300 black individuals were eliminated in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which took down 35 blocks in the then-prosperous Greenwood community

The area was once filled with restaurants, theaters, hotels, banks and supermarket before it was burned down

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

'If [my grandfather] had been here today, it probably would have been the most corrective 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 business in Greenwood that were damaged, meanwhile, acknowledged the political difficulty of providing cash payments to descendants.

But at the exact same time, she questioned 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 rightfully was our inheritance, and it was literally removed.'

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

Nichols stated the neighborhood was once a center of commerce

The violence in 1921 erupted after a white female told police that a black male had gotten her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa industrial structure on May 30, 1921.

The following day, cops jailed the guy, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had attempted to assault the woman. White individuals surrounded the court house, demanding the guy be turned over.

World War One veterans were among black men who went to the court house to face the mob. A white man attempted to deactivate a black veteran and a shot rang out, touching off even more .

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

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

Nobody was ever charged in the violence, which the federal government now classifies as a 'coordinated military-style attack' by white citizens, and not the work of a rowdy mob.