The first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has revealed an ambitious reparations plan that would see more than $100 million bought the descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Mayor Monroe Nichols revealed 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.

Of that money, $24 million will approach housing and own a home for the descendants of the attack that killed as lots of as 300 black people and razed 35 blocks, according to Public Radio Tulsa.

Another $21 million will money land acquisition, scholarship funding and economic advancement for the blighted north Tulsa neighborhood, and a tremendous $60 million will go towards cultural preservation to enhance structures in the once prosperous Greenwood community.

'For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has actually been a stain on our city's history,' Nichols stated at an event honoring 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 big steps to restore.'

But the proposal will not include direct cash payments to the last recognized survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, who are 110 and 111 years of ages.

Mayor Monroe Nichols revealed on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust consisting of private funds to resolve issues including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic advancement 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 defending reparations for several years, and previously this year their lawyer Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations prepare must consist of direct payments to the two survivors as well as a victim's payment fund for exceptional claims.

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

The ruling was then supported by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2015, moistening racial justice advocates' hopes that the city would ever make financial amends.

But after taking office earlier this year, Nichols said he evaluated 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 wanted to do was find a method in which we could take in a variety of these suggestions, so that it's reflective of the descendant neighborhood, of the folks that brought forth some suggestions,' Nichols said as he likewise promised to continue to look for mass graves believed to include victims of the massacre and release 45,000 previously classified city records.

No part of his strategy would require city board 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 likewise identify how to disperse the funds.

Still, the city board would have to authorize the transfer of any city residential or commercial property to the trust, something the mayor stated was extremely likely.

People take pictures at a Black Wall Street mural in the historic Greenwood community

He explained that a person of the points that actually stuck to him in these discussions was the destruction of not simply what Greenwood was - with its dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and supermarket - but what it might have been.

'The Greenwood District at its height was a center of commerce,' he informed the Associated Press. 'So what was lost was not simply something from North Tulsa or the black neighborhood. It actually robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have equaled anywhere else worldwide.'

'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 a financial juggernaut and would have most likely made the city double in size.'

Many at Sunday's event stated they supported the plan, despite the fact that it does not consist of cash payments to the two elderly survivors of the attack.

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

The area was as soon as filled with restaurants, theaters, hotels, banks and supermarket before it was burned down

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

'If [my grandpa] had been here today, it probably 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 company in Greenwood that were ruined, on the other hand, acknowledged the political difficulty 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 grandpa would still have his hotel,' stated Weary, 65.

'It rightfully 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 throughout the Tulsa Race Massacre on June 1, 1921

Nichols stated the community was as soon as a center of commerce

The violence in 1921 emerged after a white woman informed police that a black man had grabbed her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa commercial building on May 30, 1921.

The following day, police jailed the man, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had attempted to assault the lady. White people surrounded the courthouse, requiring the guy be handed over.

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

White people 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 citizens.

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 a rowdy mob.