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

Mayor Monroe Nichols revealed on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust making up private funds to deal with issues 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 eliminated as many as 300 black people and razed 35 blocks, according to Public Radio Tulsa.

Another $21 million will fund land acquisition, scholarship financing and for the blighted north Tulsa community, and a massive $60 million will approach cultural preservation to enhance structures in the once prosperous Greenwood community.

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

'The massacre was concealed from history books, just to be followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a highway built to choke off financial vigor and the continuous underinvestment of local, state and federal governments.

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

But the proposal will not consist of direct money payments to the last recognized 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 attend to problems consisting of housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic advancement for north Tulsans

His plan does not consist of direct money payments to the last recognized survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle (left) and Viola Fletcher (best), who are 110 and 111 years old. They are envisioned in 2021

They had actually been fighting for reparations for many years, and previously this year their attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations plan must include direct payments to the two survivors in addition to a victim's compensation fund for impressive claims.

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

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

But after taking workplace previously 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 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 community, of the folks that produced some recommendations,' Nichols said as he likewise swore to continue to search for mass graves believed to include victims of the massacre and release 45,000 formerly classified city records.

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

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 said was highly most likely.

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

He described that one of the points that truly stuck to him in these conversations was the destruction of not simply what Greenwood was - with its restaurants, theaters, hotels, banks and supermarket - however 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 simply something from North Tulsa or the black neighborhood. 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 exact same time,' he included in his remarks to the Times. 'That would have made us a financial juggernaut and would have probably made the city double in size.'

Many at Sunday's occasion stated they supported the plan, even though it does not consist of money payments to the two senior survivors of the attack.

As many as 300 black people were eliminated in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which took down 35 blocks in the then-prosperous Greenwood area

The area was as soon as filled with dining establishments, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery stores 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 grandpa] had been here today, it most likely 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 cab business in Greenwood that were damaged, meanwhile, acknowledged the political difficulty of giving money payments to descendants.

But at the same time, she questioned 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 removed.'

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

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

The violence in 1921 erupted after a white woman told authorities that a black guy had grabbed her arm in an elevator in a downtown Tulsa commercial structure on May 30, 1921.

The following day, authorities jailed the male, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had tried to assault the female. White individuals surrounded the court house, requiring the male be turned over.

World War One veterans were among black males who went to the court house to face the mob. A white male attempted to deactivate a black veteran and a shot rang 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 people were deputized by authorities and instructed to shoot the black locals.

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