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The first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has revealed an enthusiastic 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 revealed on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust making up private funds to deal with issues consisting of 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 individuals and took down 35 blocks, according to Public Radio Tulsa.

Another $21 million will money land acquisition, scholarship funding and economic development for the blighted north Tulsa community, and a tremendous $60 million will go toward cultural preservation to improve buildings in the as soon as flourishing Greenwood neighborhood.

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

'The massacre was concealed from history books, only to be followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a highway constructed to choke off financial vigor and the perpetual underinvestment of regional, state and federal governments.

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

But the proposition will not include direct money 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 address issues including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and financial advancement for north Tulsans

His strategy does not consist of direct money payments to the last known survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle (left) and Viola Fletcher (right), who are 110 and 111 years of ages. They are visualized in 2021

They had actually been combating for reparations for many years, and earlier this year their attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations plan must include direct payments to the 2 survivors along with a victim's compensation fund for impressive claims.

However, a lawsuit Solomon-Simmons - who also founded the group Justice for Greenwood - was overruled in 2023 by an Oklahoma judge who stated the plaintiffs 'do not have endless rights to compensation.'

The judgment was then upheld by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, moistening racial justice supporters' hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.

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

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

'What we wished to do was find a method in which we might take in a variety of these suggestions, so that it's reflective of the descendant neighborhood, of the folks that came up with some suggestions,' Nichols stated as he also vowed to continue to search for mass graves thought to consist of victims of the massacre and release 45,000 formerly categorized city records.

No part of his strategy would require city council approval, the mayor kept in mind, and any fundraising would be carried out by an executive director whose salary will be spent for by private financing.

A Board of Trustees would also figure out 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 stated was highly likely.

People take photos at a Black Wall Street mural in the historic Greenwood area

He discussed that a person of the points that truly stuck with him in these discussions was the damage of not just what Greenwood was - with its restaurants, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery shops - but what it could 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 in fact robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have equaled anywhere else on the planet.'

'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 an economic juggernaut and would have most likely made the city double in size.'

Many at Sunday's occasion stated they supported the strategy, although it does not include money payments to the 2 senior survivors of the attack.
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As many as 300 black people were eliminated in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which took down 35 blocks in the then-prosperous Greenwood community

The neighborhood was when filled with dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery shops before it was burned down

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

'If [my grandfather] had actually been here today, it probably 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 business in Greenwood that were destroyed, meanwhile, acknowledged the political difficulty of providing money to descendants.

But at the very same time, she questioned how much of her household's wealth was lost in the violence.

'If Greenwood was still there, my grandpa would still have his hotel,' said Weary, 65.

'It truly was our inheritance, and it was actually eliminated.'

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 said the community was as soon as a center of commerce

The violence in 1921 appeared after a white woman informed cops that a black man had actually gotten her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa business structure on May 30, 1921.

The following day, authorities apprehended the guy, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had attempted to assault the woman. White people surrounded the courthouse, requiring the male be handed over.

World War One veterans were among black guys who went to the court house to face the mob. A white male tried to deactivate a black veteran and a shot called out, touching off further violence.

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

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

Nobody was ever charged in the violence, which the federal government now categorizes as a 'collaborated military-style attack' by white people, and not the work of an unruly mob.