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

Of that cash, $24 million will approach housing and home ownership for the descendants of the attack that eliminated as numerous as 300 black people and took down 35 blocks, according to Public Radio Tulsa.

Another $21 million will money land acquisition, scholarship funding and financial advancement for the blighted north Tulsa community, and a massive $60 million will approach cultural preservation to improve buildings in the once flourishing Greenwood area.

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

'The massacre was concealed from history books, just to be followed by the deliberate acts of redlining, a highway built to choke off economic vigor and the continuous underinvestment of local, state and federal governments.

'Now it's time to take the next huge actions 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 of ages.

Mayor Monroe Nichols announced on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust comprising personal funds to address concerns consisting of 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 of ages. They are pictured in 2021

They had actually been defending reparations for several years, and earlier this year their attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations prepare ought to consist of direct payments to the two survivors as well as a victim's payment fund for outstanding claims.

However, a lawsuit Solomon-Simmons - who likewise established the group Justice for Greenwood - was overruled in 2023 by an Oklahoma judge who stated the claimants 'do not have limitless rights to compensation.'

The judgment was then upheld by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2015, dampening racial justice advocates' hopes that the city would ever make monetary amends.

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

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

'What we wanted to do was discover a method which we could take in a number of these recommendations, so that it's reflective of the descendant community, of the folks that came up with some recommendations,' Nichols stated as he also swore to continue to look for mass graves thought to contain victims of the massacre and release 45,000 previously categorized city records.

No part of his strategy would need city council approval, the mayor noted, and any fundraising would be performed by an executive director whose salary will be paid for by personal financing.

A Board of Trustees would also determine how to distribute 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 said was extremely most likely.

People take photos at a Black Wall Street mural in the historical Greenwood community

He described that one of the points that truly stuck with him in these discussions was the destruction of not just what Greenwood was - with its restaurants, theaters, hotels, banks and supermarket - however 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 simply something from North Tulsa or the black community. It in fact robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have matched anywhere else worldwide.'

'You would have had the center of oil wealth here and the center of black wealth here at the same time,' he included in 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 occasion stated they supported the plan, even though it does not include money payments to the 2 senior survivors of the attack.

As numerous as 300 black people were killed in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which took down 35 blocks in the then-prosperous Greenwood neighborhood

The community was as soon as 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 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 company in that were ruined, on the other hand, 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 removed.'

A group of black were marched past the corner of second 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 guy had grabbed her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa commercial structure on May 30, 1921.

The following day, authorities arrested the man, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had attempted to assault the woman. White people surrounded the courthouse, demanding the man be turned over.

World War One veterans were amongst black men who went to the court house to deal with the mob. A white male tried to deactivate a black veteran and a shot sounded out, touching off even more violence.

White individuals then robbed and burned buildings and dragged the black individuals from their beds and beat them, according to historical accounts.

The white individuals were deputized by authorities and advised to shoot the black residents.

No one was ever charged in the violence, which the federal government now categorizes as a 'coordinated military-style attack' by white residents, and not the work of a rowdy mob.