The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma is preparing to award its black community a $105m (£73.8m) reparations package to address the harms caused by the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, one of the largest and most violent racial attacks in US history.
Nichols made the announcement on Sunday during Tulsa’s first ever official Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day.
“The Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city’s history… hidden from history books,” Nichols said.
The Tulsa reparations will be made as Trump, now back in the White House, is ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices in the US government and many major companies are abandoning or reducing their diversity initiatives.
The last two known survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Ford Fletcher, lost a long court battle seeking reparations last summer.
The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is getting ready to give its black community a $105 million (£73.08 million) reparations package to make up for the damage done by the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, which was one of the biggest and bloodiest racial attacks in American history.
Monroe Nichols, the first Black mayor of Tulsa, has devised a plan that emphasizes community redevelopment rather than making direct payments to the two surviving survivors or their descendants.
The announcement was made by Nichols on Sunday, the first official Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day.
The money was raised through a private trust and includes $60 million for a cultural preservation fund that focuses on “reducing blight” and $24 million for a housing fund.
A stain on our city’s history is the Tulsa Race Massacre. concealed from history books,” Nichols remarked.
The construction of a highway “to choke off economic vitality,” “perpetual underinvestment,” and “intentional acts of redlining,” in which Black people were refused home and property loans, he claimed, were among the economic harms that followed that tragedy.
Nichols stated, “It’s time to take the next big steps to restore.”.
Road to Repair is the plan’s name, and the Greenwood Trust will oversee its financial management. It aims to have $105 million in assets committed or secured by June 1st, with a portion of that amount going into a legacy fund that will allow the trust to buy and develop land.
According to Nichols, the proposal would not need the consent of the city council. However, he stated that it was highly probable that the council would approve the transfer of any city property to the trust.
The name of the Greenwood Trust comes from the Greenwood District in Tulsa, a once-thriving black neighborhood with an economy so strong that it was known as Black Wall Street.
That all changed in May 1921 when it was set on fire by a white mob, destroying over 1,000 houses and buildings in less than a day. There were reportedly 300 Black residents killed and numerous others injured.
For Nichols, the incident “robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have rivaled anywhere else in the world,” he said over the phone.
For many years, the massacre was largely forgotten until 2020, when then-President Donald Trump declared he would hold an election rally in Tulsa on June 19, also known as Juneteenth, which marks the abolition of slavery. The rally was rescheduled, and Juneteenth was proclaimed a national holiday by Joe Biden, his successor.
Trump, who is now back in the White House, is ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices in the US government, and many large corporations are reducing or discontinuing their diversity initiatives. As a result, the Tulsa reparations will be made.
Additionally, the package from Tulsa is the first comprehensive plan to allocate funds specifically to address the effects of a racially motivated attack.
In 2021, Evanston, Illinois, a city outside of Chicago, became the first to offer reparations to its Black citizens. Qualified households were given money for things like down payments and home repairs.
The issue of directly addressing historical acts of racism, like slavery, through reparations has long caused division among Americans.
The first black governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, announced in May that he would veto a bill that would establish a commission to research reparations in his state.
However, California did not provide direct financial compensation last year, although it did apologize for past discrimination against Black Americans and approve some reparations initiatives.
Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Ford Fletcher, the last two known survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, lost a protracted legal battle last summer seeking compensation.
