Tulsa mayor unveils plan for $100M trust to address effects of 1921 race massacre
Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols (D) outlined plans for a trust on Sunday to address the ongoing effects stemming from the 1921 massacre that killed as many as 300 Black people, in one of the worst racial attacks in the country's history.
The $105 million city-backed plan, put forward by the city's first Black mayor, would not provide direct payments to descendants of the massacre, nor to the two living survivors themselves.
But it would set up a private charitable trust aimed at rebuilding the city's north side and investing in housing and revitalizing buildings.
'This is a critical step to help to unify Tulsans and heal the wounds that for so long prevented generations of our neighbors from being able to recover from the Race Massacre,' Nichols said in a press release.
'The Greenwood Trust is really a bridge that connects what we as a community can bring to the table and what the community needs. As we seek to make this framework a reality, I am eager to work alongside my fellow Tulsans and partners across the country to create a fundamental shift in how we further establish generational wealth, housing opportunities, and repair for so many Tulsans,' he continued.
The Greenwood Trust will be created with the goal of securing the $105 million in assets by June 1, 2026, which is the 105th anniversary of the massacre.
The plan specifies that a privately funded executive director, as well as a board of trustees and a board of advisors, would be onboarded to 'manage and operate the daily functions of the trust.' The first operational year of the trust will be a 'planning year' to get the initiatives off the ground.
The majority of that funding, $60 million, would be designated for the Cultural Preservation Fund, to focus on improving buildings and 'reducing blight.'
The Cultural Preservation Fund will also go toward implementing aspects of the Kirkpatrick Heights Greenwood Master Plan, which aims to develop a framework to redevelop 56 acres of publicly owned property in North Tulsa.
The master plan is a community-led planning process whose goal is to 'evaluate existing conditions and opportunities, develop a vision for redevelopment of the sites, recommend structures for long-term ownership and governance of the sites, and create an action-oriented plan for implementation,' according to the site.
Also included in the $105 million Greenwood Trust is a $24 million Housing Fund, which would create housing opportunities for massacre survivors and descendants.
The third component of the trust would be a $21 million Legacy Fund, which would help create a scholarship funding structure for stronger educational pathways for descendants, as well as funding for small business and organizational grants to further economic development in the community.
Nichols announced the plan at the Greenwood Cultural Center on Sunday, June 1, which he previously designated as Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day, an official city holiday, in an executive order earlier this year.
He noted that the plan does not use the term reparations, which he said is politically charged, and instead he characterized his plan as a 'road to repair,' The Associated Press reported.
'At this moment in our nation's history, this work will allow us to stand together and become a national model for how cities confront their history while charting a new path forward rooted in unity and truth,' Nichols said in the release.
'I firmly believe we have a community that is ready to take this step forward based on the advocacy work that has already taken place. 104 years after the Massacre, it is up to us to provide the framework that will build up a community that has been left out for far too long.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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CNET
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82% of HBCUs Fight Internet Deserts: One Institution's Strategy for Change
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‘I don't know why the president has this problem': Trump had a history of disparaging Haiti and Haitians before the travel ban
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New '1984' Foreword Includes Warning About 'Problematic' Characters
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The 75th anniversary edition of George Orwell's novel 1984, which coined the term "thoughtcrime" to describe the act of having thoughts that question the ruling party's ideology, has become an ironic lightning rod in debates over alleged trigger warnings and the role of historical context in classic literature. The introduction to the new edition, endorsed by Orwell's estate and written by the American author Dolen Perkins-Valdezm, is at the center of the storm, drawing fire from conservative commentators as well as public intellectuals, and prompting a wide spectrum of reaction from academics who study Orwell's work. Perkins-Valdez opens the introduction with a self-reflective exercise: imagining what it would be like to read 1984 for the first time today. She writes that "a sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity," noting the complete absence of Black characters. She also describes her pause at the protagonist Winston Smith's "despicable" misogyny, but ultimately chooses to continue reading, writing: "I know the difference between a flawed character and a flawed story." "I'm enjoying the novel on its own terms, not as a classic but as a good story; that is, until Winston reveals himself to be a problematic character," she writes. "For example, we learn of him: 'He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones.' Whoa, wait a minute, Orwell." That framing was enough to provoke sharp critique from novelist and essayist Walter Kirn on the podcast America This Week, co-hosted with journalist Matt Taibbi. Kirn characterized the foreword as a kind of ideological overreach. "Thank you for your trigger warning for 1984," he said. "It is the most 1984ish thing I've ever f***ing read." In which you will learn that the current leading paperback version of 1984, its official Orwell-estate-approved 75th anniversary edition, includes a 1984-ish trigger-warning introduction calling the novel's hero "problematic" because of his "misogyny." I am not making this up. — Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) June 2, 2025 Later in the episode, which debuted on June 1, Kirn blasted what he saw as an imposed "permission structure" by publishers and academic elites. "It's a sort of Ministry of Truthism," he said, referring to the Ministry of Truth that features prominently in the dystopian novel. "They're giving you a little guidebook to say, 'Here's how you're supposed to feel when you read this.'" Conservative commentator such as Ed Morrissey described the foreword as part of "an attempt to rob [Orwell's work] of meaning by denigrating it as 'problematic.'" Morrissey argued that trigger warnings on literary classics serve to "distract readers at the start from its purpose with red herrings over issues of taste." But not all responses aligned with that view. Academic Rebuttal Peter Brian Rose-Barry, a philosophy professor at Saginaw Valley State University and author of George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality, disputed the entire premise. "There just isn't [a trigger warning]," he told Newsweek in an email after examining the edition. "She never accuses Orwell of thoughtcrime. She never calls for censorship or cancelling Orwell." In Rose-Barry's view, the foreword is neither invasive nor ideological, but reflective. "Perkins-Valdez suggests in her introduction that 'love and artistic beauty can act as healing forces in a totalitarian state,'" he noted. "Now, I find that deeply suspect... but I'd use this introduction to generate a discussion in my class." Taibbi and Kirn, by contrast, took issue with that exact line during the podcast. "Love heals? In 1984?" Taibbi asked. "The whole thing ends with Winston broken, saying he loves Big Brother," the symbol of the totalitarian state at the heart of the book. Kirn laughed and added, "It's the kind of revisionist uplift you get from a book club discussion after someone just watched The Handmaid's Tale." Photographs of Eric Blair, whose pen name was George Orwell, from his Metropolitan Police file, c.1940. Photographs of Eric Blair, whose pen name was George Orwell, from his Metropolitan Police file, c.1940. The National Archives UK Perkins-Valdez, a Black writer, Harvard graduate and professor of literature at American University, also noted the novel's lack of racial representation: "That sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity at all." Kirn responded to that sentiment on the show by pointing out that Orwell was writing about midcentury Britain: "When Orwell wrote the book, Black people made up maybe one percent of the population. It's like expecting white characters in every Nigerian novel." Richard Keeble, former chair of the Orwell Society, argued that critiques of Orwell's treatment of race and gender have long been part of academic discourse. "Questioning Orwell's representation of Blacks in 1984 can usefully lead us to consider the evolution of his ideas on race generally," he told Newsweek. "Yet Orwell struggled throughout his life, and not with complete success, to exorcise what Edward Said called 'Orientalism.'" Keeble added, "Trigger warnings and interpretative forewords... join the rich firmament of Orwellian scholarship—being themselves open to critique and analysis." Cultural Overreach The 75th anniversary edition of George Orwell's 1984 has become a lightning rod in debates over alleged wokeness, censorship and the role of historical context in reading classic literature. The 75th anniversary edition of George Orwell's 1984 has become a lightning rod in debates over alleged wokeness, censorship and the role of historical context in reading classic literature. Newsweek / Penguin Random House While critics like Kirn view Perkins-Valdez's new foreword as a symptom of virtue signaling run amok, others see it as part of a long-standing literary dialogue. Laura Beers, a historian at American University and author of Orwell's Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century, acknowledged that such reactions reflect deeper political divides. But she defended the legitimacy of approaching Orwell through modern ethical and social lenses. "What makes 1984 such a great novel is that it was written to transcend a specific historical context," she told Newsweek. "Although it has frequently been appropriated by the right as a critique of 'socialism,' it was never meant to be solely a critique of Stalin's Russia." Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Courtesy American University "Rather," she added, "it was a commentary on how absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the risk to all societies, including democracies like Britain and the United States, of the unchecked concentration of power." Beers also addressed the role of interpretive material in shaping the reading experience. "Obviously, yes, in that 'interpretive forewords' give a reader an initial context in which to situate the texts that they are reading," she said. "That said, such forewords are more often a reflection on the attitudes and biases of their own time." While the foreword has prompted the familiar battle lines playing out across the Trump-era culture wars, Beers sees the conversation itself as in keeping with Orwell's legacy. "By attempting to place Orwell's work in conversation with changing values and historical understandings in the decades since he was writing," she said, "scholars like Perkins-Valdez are exercising the very freedom to express uncomfortable and difficult opinions that Orwell explicitly championed."
