The first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has actually unveiled an enthusiastic reparations prepare that would see more than $100 million bought the descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Mayor Monroe Nichols announced on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust making up personal funds to address concerns including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic advancement for north Tulsans.

Of that cash, $24 million will approach housing and own a home 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 fund land acquisition, scholarship financing and financial development for the blighted north Tulsa neighborhood, and a whopping $60 million will approach cultural conservation to improve structures in the once thriving Greenwood area.

'For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city's history,' Nichols said at an occasion honoring 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 economic vigor and the perpetual underinvestment of local, state and federal governments.

'Now it's time to take the next big steps to restore.'

But the proposition will not include 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 personal funds to address problems including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic advancement for north Tulsans

His strategy does not consist of direct money payments to the last recognized survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle (left) and Viola Fletcher (right), who are 110 and 111 years of ages. They are pictured 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 in addition to a victim's compensation fund for exceptional claims.

However, a lawsuit Solomon-Simmons - who likewise established the group Justice for Greenwood - was struck down in 2023 by an Oklahoma judge who declared the claimants 'don't 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 workplace earlier this year, Nichols stated he examined 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 variety of these suggestions, so that it's reflective of the descendant neighborhood, of the folks that brought forth some recommendations,' Nichols stated as he also swore to continue to search for mass graves thought to include victims of the massacre and release 45,000 previously categorized city records.

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

A Board of Trustees would likewise figure out how to disperse the funds.

Still, the city council would have to license 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 really stuck to him in these conversations was the destruction of not just what Greenwood was - with its restaurants, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery stores - 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 matched anywhere else in the world.'

'You would have had the center of oil wealth here and the center of black wealth here at the exact same time,' he added in 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 event said they supported the strategy, even though it does not consist of cash payments to the 2 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 as soon as filled with dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery shops 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 most likely would have been the most corrective day of his life,' he told 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 ruined, on the other hand, acknowledged the political trouble of offering cash payments to descendants.

But at the same time, she wondered just 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 during the Tulsa Race Massacre on June 1, 1921

Nichols said the neighborhood was once a center of commerce

The violence in 1921 emerged after a white lady informed authorities that a black man had grabbed her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa business structure on May 30, 1921.

The following day, authorities detained the guy, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had actually tried to assault the female. White people surrounded the courthouse, requiring the man be handed over.

World War One veterans were among black men who went to the court house to deal with the mob. A white guy tried to disarm 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 locals.

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