The very first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has actually unveiled 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 consisting of personal funds to attend to issues consisting of housing, scholarships, land acquisition and financial development for north Tulsans.

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

Another $21 million will fund land acquisition, scholarship funding and financial development for the blighted north Tulsa neighborhood, and a tremendous $60 million will approach cultural conservation to enhance structures in the once flourishing Greenwood community.

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

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

But the proposal will not consist of 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 deal with concerns including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic development for north Tulsans

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

They had been combating for reparations for years, and earlier this year their lawyer Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations plan must include direct payments to the 2 survivors in addition to a victim's settlement 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 complaintants 'do not have unrestricted rights to payment.'

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

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

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

'What we wished to do was find a method which we could take in a number of these suggestions, so that it's reflective of the descendant community, of the folks that brought forth some recommendations,' Nichols said as he likewise swore to continue to search for mass graves thought to include victims of the massacre and release 45,000 previously classified city records.

No part of his plan would need city board approval, the mayor noted, and any fundraising would be carried out by an executive director whose wage will be paid for by private funding.

A Board of Trustees would also figure out 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 extremely likely.

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

He explained that one of the points that really stuck to him in these discussions was the damage of not simply what Greenwood was - with its dining establishments, 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 community. It really robbed Tulsa of a financial future that would have measured up to 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 plan, although it does not consist of cash payments to the 2 senior survivors of the attack.

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

The community was once 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 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 company in Greenwood that were ruined, meanwhile, acknowledged the political trouble of giving money 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 rightfully was our inheritance, and it was literally taken away.'

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 when a center of commerce

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

The following day, police apprehended the man, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had actually tried to attack the female. White people surrounded the courthouse, demanding the man be turned over.

World War One veterans were among black guys who went to the courthouse to deal with the mob. A white man tried to deactivate a black veteran and a shot called out, touching off even more violence.

White people then robbed and burned structures and dragged the black people from their beds and beat them, according to historical accounts.

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

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 an unruly mob.