Latest news with #MonroeNichols
Yomiuri Shimbun
a day ago
- Business
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Tulsa Announces Reparations for the 1921 ‘Black Wall Street' Massacre
Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post Women and children wait in line for malaria medication at a health center in Nametil, Mozambique, in 2023. The city of Tulsa, home to one of the most horrifying racial-terror massacres in U.S. history and the people who tried to cover it up, has announced a $105 million reparations package that will put dollars and actions toward redress. 'For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city's history,' Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols said in a speech Sunday announcing the reparations package, which will pump millions into the restoration of families and communities that had their trajectories derailed by the 1921 attack. 'We have worked to recognize and remember, but now it's time to restore,' Nichols said. It was something that families of survivors and victims have been waiting generations to hear. 'This marks a historic moment where the city of Tulsa is not just acknowledging past harm, but taking real steps toward repair,' said Kristi Williams, a justice activist in Tulsa and a descendant of survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. It took decades of research by historians and journalists – and reports and investigations by state and federal commissions – to uncover the violence that claimed more than 300 Black lives, torched at least 1,100 Black homes, led to survivors being put into displacement camps and decimated the prosperous enclave of Greenwood, known as 'Black Wall Street.' More than a riot, 'the massacre was the result not of uncontrolled mob violence, but of a coordinated, military-style attack on Greenwood,' according to a news release that accompanied a Justice Department report issued in January. 'The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,' Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in the news release. Reparations for historical injustices have been studied and talked about for years as Americans reckon with the cruelties of the past and how they reverberate in society today. Legislators in D.C., Maryland and California have considered ways to right the societal inequities that resulted, but with little success. In 1994, Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles (D) signed a $2.1 million compensation bill for the Rosewood massacre of 1923. Nine survivors received $150,000 each. A state university scholarship fund was established for the families of Rosewood survivors and their descendants. In 2021, Evanston, Illinois, became one of the first U.S. cities to pay reparations to Black residents. It's complicated to put a monetary value on cruelty and the opportunities it devoured. But the Tulsa case provides clear examples of families and businesses that were impacted, as well as voices that can outline their visions of justice. The reparations will be powered by the charitable Greenwood Trust and built with private capital. The target is to spend $24 million in investments for affordable housing and homeownership; $60 million for historic preservation; and $21 million in scholarships, small business grants and to continue identifying the victims of the massacre buried in mass graves, according to Nichols's plan. 'The Department of Justice's report, while laying out the undeniable facts of the massacre, does seem to suggest that justice – in the context of the massacre – will always be acquainted with an asterisk,' Nichols said. The plan addresses that lingering question of justice, some of the families said. 'We're grateful for the community that shaped these recommendations, and we're ready for the work ahead,' Williams said. 'One of the strongest demands we heard from the community was housing. That's why we recommended $24 million for home repairs and down payments because repair without investment is just rhetoric. The mayor's support shows that Tulsa is ready to do more than talk.' The plan tries to replace the post-catastrophe mechanisms, such as lawsuits and insurance claims, that usually kick in to help victims recover. None of the thousands of White Tulsans who took part were ever arrested; no insurance claims covering the torched businesses were paid out; the suspected attackers are all dead; and the statute of limitations has expired, Nichols said. 'Every promise made by elected officials to help rebuild Greenwood at the time was broken,' he said. The survivors haven't let the city forget. 'For generations, Greenwood descendants and advocates of Black and North Tulsans have kept the flame of justice lit,' said Greg Robinson II, a member of the 'Beyond Apology' task force for reparations. Nichols, Tulsa's first Black mayor, made it a priority. 'The Greenwood community has waited over a century for meaningful repair,' Tulsa City Council member Vanessa Hall-Harper said. 'Our call for $24 million in housing reparations is a direct response to the generational theft of Black wealth that began in 1921 and continued through redlining, urban renewal, and neglect. This moment reflects what is possible when leadership listens to the people, and I am proud that we have a mayor who has done just that.' The attack was sparked in an elevator on May 30, 1921, when a shoeshiner named Dick Rowland stepped into an open wire-caged elevator operated by a 17-year-old White girl named Sarah Page. Witnesses said that Page screamed when the door opened and that Rowland fled. The Tulsa Tribune had a headline the next day that said, 'Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator,' and Rowland was arrested. Decades later, most historians believe Rowland may have stepped on Page's foot or bumped into her. The charges were dropped, and Page later wrote a letter exonerating him. But simmering racial hatred and the incendiary headline sent a White mob to the Tulsa Courthouse where Rowland was being held. That was a common pattern across America. Newspapers regularly reported on hundreds of lynchings that happened after a Black man was arrested – usually on flimsy charges – and a mob overtook the jail, dragged the prisoner out and executed him. But the murderous search for vengeance in Tulsa went beyond a single person. Black World War I veterans who heard the calls to lynch Rowland went to the courthouse to protect him. They clashed with the mob, and a shot was fired. In less than 24 hours, as many as 10,000 White Tulsa residents, many of whom had recently drilled as part of an organized, militaristic 'Home Guard,' arrived and systematically destroyed the 35 blocks of Greenwood, according to the federal investigation. Witnesses reported that planes dropped turpentine bombs on the burning city. Greenwood had been a uniquely prosperous Black community, with 'a nationally renowned entrepreneurial center – a city within a city where places like the Dreamland Theatre, the Stradford Hotel, grocery stores and doctor's offices flourished,' Nichols said. 'At the same time, churches provided the foundation of faith needed to thrive in a segregated society.' All of it was decimated. 'Personal belongings and household goods had been removed from many homes and piled in the streets,' the Tulsa Daily World said on June 2, 1921. 'On the steps of the few houses that remained sat feeble and gray Negro men and women and occasionally a small child. The look in their eyes was one of dejection and supplication. Judging from their attitude, it was not of material consequence to them whether they lived or died. Harmless themselves, they apparently could not conceive the brutality and fiendishness of men who would deliberately set fire to the homes of their friends and neighbors and just as deliberately shoot them down in their tracks.' The massacre was covered up. Former Oklahoma state representative Don Ross said he had never heard about it until he was about 15 and one of his teachers, a survivor, described it in class. 'More annoyed than bored, I leaped from my chair and spoke: 'Greenwood was never burned. Ain't no 300 people dead. We're too old for fairy tales',' Ross wrote in the state's 2001 report on the massacre. His teacher set him straight. Tulsa finally apologized for its role in the massacre in 2021. Two of the last known survivors, Viola Ford Fletcher and Lessie Benningfield Randle, sued for reparations. The Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed their case last year. The announcement of the reparations plan restored hope that the city has a commitment to move past the horror. 'June 1, 2025 was the culmination of that commitment,' Williams said. 'Tulsa has finally committed to moving beyond apology to justice.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tulsa's new Black mayor proposes $100M trust to 'repair' impact of 1921 Race Massacre
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Tulsa's new mayor on Sunday proposed a $100 million private trust as part of a reparations plan to give descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre scholarships and housing help in a city-backed bid to make amends for one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history. The plan by Mayor Monroe Nichols, the first Black mayor of Oklahoma's second-largest city, would not provide direct cash payments to descendants or the last two centenarian survivors of the attack that killed as many as 300 Black people. He made the announcement at the Greenwood Cultural Center, located in the once-thriving district of North Tulsa that was destroyed by a white mob. Nichols said he does not use the term reparations, which he calls politically charged, characterizing his sweeping plan instead as a 'road to repair.' 'For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city's history,' Nichols said Sunday after receiving a standing ovation from several hundred people. 'The massacre was hidden from history books, only to be followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a highway built to choke off economic vitality and the perpetual underinvestment of local, state and federal governments. 'Now it's time to take the next big steps to restore.' Nichols said the proposal wouldn't require city council approval, although the council would need to authorize the transfer of any city property to the trust, something he said was highly likely. The private charitable trust would be created with a goal to secure $105 million in assets, with most of the funding either secured or committed by June 1, 2026. Although details would be developed over the next year by an executive director and a board of managers, the plan calls for the bulk of the funding, $60 million, to go toward improving buildings and revitalizing the city's north side. 'The Greenwood District at its height was a center of commerce,' Nichols said in a telephone interview. 'So what was lost was not just something from North Tulsa or the Black community. It actually robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have rivaled anywhere else in the world." Nichols' proposal follows an executive order he signed earlier this year recognizing June 1 as Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day, an official city holiday. Events Sunday in the Greenwood District included a picnic for families, worship services and an evening candlelight vigil. Nichols also realizes the current national political climate, particularly President Trump's sweeping assault on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, poses challenging political crosswinds. 'The fact that this lines up with a broader national conversation is a tough environment,' Nichols admitted, 'but it doesn't change the work we have to do.' Jacqueline Weary, is a granddaughter of massacre survivor John R. Emerson, Sr., who owned a hotel and cab company in Greenwood that were destroyed. She acknowledged the political difficulty of giving cash payments to descendants. But at the same time, she wondered 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.' Tulsa is not the first U.S. city to explore reparations. The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, was the first U.S. city to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination, offering qualifying households $25,000 for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city. The funding for the program came from taxes on the sale of recreational marijuana. Other communities and organizations that have considered providing reparations range from the state of California to cities including Amherst, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; Asheville, North Carolina; and Iowa City, Iowa; religious denominations like the Episcopal Church; and prominent colleges like Georgetown University in Washington. In Tulsa, there are only two living survivors of the Race Massacre: 110-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, who is 111. The women, both of whom were in attendance on Sunday, received direct financial compensation from both a Tulsa-based nonprofit and a New York-based philanthropic organization, but have not received any recompense from the city or state. Damario Solomon-Simmons, an attorney for the survivors and the founder of the Justice for Greenwood Foundation, said earlier this year that any reparations plan should include direct payments to Randle and Fletcher and a victims' compensation fund for outstanding claims. A lawsuit filed by Solomon-Simmons on behalf of the survivors was rejected by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, dampening racial justice advocates' hopes that the city would ever make financial amends. ___ This story has been corrected to show one of the two living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre is Lessie Benningfield Randle, not Leslie, and that the other living survivor, Viola Fletcher, is 111, not 110. Sean Murphy, The Associated Press
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Business
- Washington Post
Tulsa announces reparations for the 1921 ‘Black Wall Street' massacre
The city of Tulsa, home to one of the most horrifying racial-terror massacres in U.S. history and the people who tried to cover it up, has announced a $105 million reparations package that will put dollars and actions toward redress. 'For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city's history,' Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols said in a speech Sunday announcing the reparations package, which will pump millions into the restoration of families and communities that had their trajectories derailed by the 1921 attack.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tulsa mayor unveils reparation plan to 'repair' community at center of 1921 Race Massacre
The mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has unveiled a reparations plan for the descendants of the Tulsa Race Massacre as well as the neighborhood area once known as "Black Wall Street" on the first official remembrance day for the massacre. Mayor Monroe Nichols' plan, dubbed "Road to Repair," centers around a private trust tasked with raising $105 million in assets before June 1, 2026, the 105th anniversary of the massacre. "The pursuit for better defines greatness - a people that will look back 104 years and dare to be better - dare to come together to face a complicated past and commit to each other for a better future," Nichols said in a speech Sunday. Along with the trust, Nichols announced the release of 45,000 historic documents related to the massacre. "For us as a city, we want to model that we are a partner that wants to foster a level of trust with this entire community," Nichols, the first Black mayor of Tulsa, told USA TODAY in an interview Monday, June 2. "The massacre has always loomed as an event that really isn't rooted in a lot of trust over the years, and releasing the documents is one of the things, along with making the Tulsa Race Massacre Day of Observance, I think are really important." Nichols said in the interview that the Trust was a way to take the conversation out of the political realm. "Let's model for everybody on how this repair work can be really restorative for the entire community, and let's do that as best we can outside the political context," Nichols said. "If it's good for all of us, well, maybe public policy can now follow something that's been a model good for everybody." Under the plan, a housing fund will receive $24 million dollars from the trust for housing and homeowner benefits for Race Massacre descendants. A cultural preservation fund will have $60 million to reduce blight and implement parts of a master plan for the Kirpatrick and Greenwood neighborhoods in North Tulsa and a legacy fund will receive $21 million to develop trust owned land and fund scholarships for descendants and economic development grants for the area. The mayor added that the trust's work provided an opportunity for parts of the "descendant community" that left Tulsa to be reconnected to the city. "There's a lot of families that, after the massacre, decided Tulsa was not the place for them," Nichols said. "The goal is a scholarship, for example, to go to school in the state of Oklahoma, to come to school here and we will pay the cost of education. The goal, with the business grants and no interest loans, is to open a business here in Tulsa, in the Greenwood District, or North Tulsa, to bring back those great entrepreneurs and business owners whose families may have left Tulsa because of what happened in 1921." The trust – named the Greenwood Trust for the neighborhood where the massacre took place in – will employ an executive director and fundraising staff, paid by private funding. Nichols said in a statement that the first year of the trust would focus on planning and fundraising. "The next step is now we're going to make these investments so it's not just symbolic," Nichols told USA TODAY. "We're going to come behind that and make the investments necessary to show that not only are we recognizing (the massacre) but we're also showing that we're a much different community in 2025 than we were in 1921." In the early 1900s, 40 blocks to the north of downtown Tulsa boasted 10,000 residents, hundreds of businesses, medical facilities an airport and more. But on May 31, 1921, a white mob descended on Greenwood – the Black section of Tulsa – burning, looting, and destroying more than 1,000 homes. The massacre is reported to have started with an accusation that Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old shoe-shiner, assaulted a white female teenager in an elevator. Decades later, the 2001 Tulsa Race Riot Commission concluded, Sarah Page, 17, was interviewed by police but made no allegations of assault. Rowland was arrested and white men went to the jail to demand that he be released to "face mob justice," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a speech launching a long-awaited Department of Justice probe into the massacre in 2024. A fight broke out after members of the Black community showed up to protect Rowland from being lynched. A mob then invaded Greenwood, looting and destroying businesses and homes. Tulsa authorities deputized some white men, instructing them to "get a gun and get busy and try to get" a Black person, according to witness accounts and records at the time. The Oklahoma National Guard participated in mass arrests of nearly everyone living in Greenwood. "Some suspect that the aim of the white mob was, all along, to appropriate the wealth of the Black community and that the allegations against Mr. Rowland were merely an excuse," Clarke said. The true death toll of the massacre may never be known, with the search for unmarked graves continuing more than a century later. Most historians who have studied the event estimate the death toll to be between 75 and 300 people. In January, the department said that while there are credible reports that law enforcement was involved in the attack, it had no avenue to prosecute the crimes. The department cited the expiration of relevant statutes of limitations and the youngest potential defendants being more than 115 years old. Contributing: Dale Denwalt, Minnah Arshad – USA TODAY Network; Reuters This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Black Wall Street' reparations plan unveiled by Tulsa mayor
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Tulsa mayor unveils staggering $100M reparations plan for black descendants of 1921 massacre
The first black mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma has unveiled an ambitious reparations plan that would see more than $100 million invested in the descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Mayor Monroe Nichols announced on Sunday that the city is opening a $105 million charitable trust comprising private funds to address issues including housing, scholarships, land acquisition and economic development for north Tulsans. Of that money, $24 million will go toward housing and home ownership for the descendants of the attack that killed as many as 300 black people and razed 35 blocks, according to Public Radio Tulsa. Another $21 million will fund land acquisition, scholarship funding and economic development for the blighted north Tulsa community, and a whopping $60 million will go toward cultural preservation to improve buildings in the once prosperous Greenwood neighborhood. 'For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city's history,' Nichols said at an event commemorating Race Massacre Observance Day. 'The massacre was hidden from history books, only to be followed by the intentional acts of redlining, a highway built to choke off economic vitality and the perpetual underinvestment of local, 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 known survivors, Leslie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, who are 110 and 111 years old. They had been fighting for reparations for years, and earlier this year their attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons argued that any reparations plan should include direct payments to the two survivors as well as a victim's compensation fund for outstanding claims. However, a lawsuit Solomon-Simmons - who also founded the group Justice for Greenwood - was struck down in 2023 by an Oklahoma judge who declared the claimants 'don't have unlimited rights to compensation.' The ruling was then upheld by the Oklahoma Supreme Court last year, dampening racial justice advocates' hopes that the city would ever make financial amends. But after taking office earlier this year, Nichols said he reviewed previous proposals from local community organizations like Justice for Greenwood. He then discussed his plan with the Tulsa City Council and descendants of the massacre victims. 'What we wanted 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 community, of the folks that brought forth some recommendations,' Nichols said as he also vowed to continue to search for mass graves believed to contain victims of the massacre and release 45,000 previously classified city records. No part of his plan would require city council approval, the mayor noted, and any fundraising would be conducted by an executive director whose salary will be paid for by private funding. A Board of Trustees would also determine how to distribute the funds. Still, the city council would have to authorize the transfer of any city property to the trust, something the mayor said was highly likely. He explained that one of the points that really stuck with him in these discussions was the destruction of not just what Greenwood was - with its restaurants, theaters, hotels, banks and grocery stores - 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 actually robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have rivaled 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 added in 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 event said they supported the plan, even though it does not include cash payments to the two elderly survivors of the attack. Chief Egunwale Amusan, a survivor descendant, for example, said the he has worked for half his life to get reparations. 'If [my grandfather] had been here today, it probably would have been the most restorative 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 destroyed, meanwhile, acknowledged the political difficulty of giving cash payments to descendants. But at the same time, she wondered 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.' The violence in 1921 erupted after a white woman told 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 arrested the man, who the Tulsa Tribune reported had tried to assault the woman. White people surrounded the courthouse, demanding the man be handed over. World War One veterans were among black men who went to the courthouse to face the mob. A white man tried to disarm a black veteran and a shot rang out, touching off further violence. White people then looted and burned buildings 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 residents. No one was ever charged in the violence, which the federal government now classifies as a 'coordinated military-style attack' by white citizens, and not the work of an unruly mob.
