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The very 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.
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Mayor Monroe Nichols revealed on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust consisting of personal funds to attend to problems including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic advancement for north Tulsans.

Of that cash, $24 million will approach housing and home ownership for the descendants of the attack that killed 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 development for the blighted north Tulsa neighborhood, and a whopping $60 million will approach cultural preservation to improve structures in the as soon as prosperous Greenwood neighborhood.

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

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

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

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 of ages.

Mayor Monroe Nichols announced on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust comprising private funds to deal with concerns including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic development for north Tulsans

His strategy does not include direct cash payments to the last recognized survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle (left) and Viola Fletcher (best), who are 110 and 111 years old. They are visualized in 2021

They had actually been fighting for reparations for years, and earlier this year their lawyer Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations plan should include direct payments to the two survivors along with a victim's payment fund for impressive claims.

However, a claim Solomon-Simmons - who also founded the group Justice for Greenwood - was struck down in 2023 by an Oklahoma judge who stated the complaintants 'don't have endless rights to payment.'

The judgment was then supported by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, justice supporters' hopes that the city would ever make monetary amends.

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

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

'What we wished to do was find a way in which we could take in a number of these recommendations, so that it's reflective of the descendant neighborhood, of the folks that came up with some recommendations,' Nichols said as he also promised to continue to browse for mass graves believed to contain victims of the massacre and release 45,000 formerly classified city records.

No part of his strategy would need city board approval, the mayor noted, and any fundraising would be performed by an executive director whose wage will be spent for by personal funding.

A Board of Trustees would likewise determine how to distribute the funds.

Still, the city council would need to license 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 historical Greenwood area

He discussed that one of the points that truly stuck to him in these conversations was the damage of not simply what Greenwood was - with its restaurants, theaters, hotels, banks and supermarket - but 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 just something from North Tulsa or the black community. It in fact 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 an economic juggernaut and would have probably made the city double in size.'

Many at Sunday's occasion stated they supported the strategy, despite the fact that it does not include money payments to the 2 senior survivors of the attack.

As lots of as 300 black individuals were eliminated in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which razed 35 blocks in the then-prosperous Greenwood neighborhood

The neighborhood was as soon as filled with restaurants, 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 cab business in Greenwood that were destroyed, meanwhile, acknowledged the political difficulty of offering money payments to descendants.

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

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

'It rightfully was our inheritance, and it was literally eliminated.'

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

Nichols stated the area was once a center of commerce

The violence in 1921 erupted after a white lady informed authorities that a black guy had gotten her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa industrial structure on May 30, 1921.

The following day, authorities jailed the male, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had attempted to attack the lady. White people surrounded the courthouse, demanding the male be turned over.

World War One veterans were among black guys who went to the courthouse to face the mob. A white guy tried to disarm a black veteran and a shot sounded out, touching off even more violence.

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

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

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