Tulsa, Okla. has tried to memorialize the lives lost during the Black Wall Street race massacre. However, survivors and descendants have yet to receive reparations.
Many racial groups in America have received reparations, from Native Americans to Japanese Americans to White Americans, who lost their free labor after enslaved African-Americans gained their freedom in 1965.
However, despite other races receiving reparations, the idea of compensating African-Americans, who suffered through slavery and various forms of oppression, often faces opposition from different groups who argue that African-Americans should simply work harder instead of seeking assistance or free handouts.
Nevertheless, Tulsa, Okla.’s first Black mayor has proposed a $100 million reparations package for the descendants of the 1921 Black Wall Street massacre, which destroyed the prosperous Greenwood district of the city.
In the early decades of the 20th century, recently emancipated African-Americans had built a thriving and self-sufficient community, affectionately known as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Okla.
Many African-American community members had become more financially prosperous than their White counterparts.
Black Wall Street had its own air strips, post offices, doctor’s offices, lawyer’s offices, hair salons, churches and other businesses necessary to sustain its residents, independently from White society.
Unfortunately, that type of success created tension between the White and African-American communities.
When rumors began spreading that a young African-American male had assaulted a young White female in an elevator, even though the young girl did not claim she was assaulted and many believe the two young people knew each other, the African-American community was attacked from land and air.
The once-thriving community was quickly obliterated.
Black Wall Street residents lost their lives, businesses and generational wealth.
Over a century later, Black Wall Street has never recovered to its former glory.
When advocates for reparations ask for reimbursement for their oppression, they do so because the loss of generational wealth caused by slavery and Jim Crow contributes heavily to the wealth gap between White Americans and African-Americans.
Reparations would be a way to close the racial wealth gap, which in turn helps prevent more racism because racism comes from a position of power.
And power often comes from a wealth advantage.
Sean Murphy of The Associated Press reported, “Tulsa’s new mayor on Saturday 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.”
Mayor Nichols does not call his proposal reparations because he said that term is politically charged.
Instead, he prefers the term “road to repair.”
He said, “For 104 years, the Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city’s history. The massacre was hidden from history books, only to be followed by 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 move forward.”
He said his plan does not need the support of the city council.
However, the city council would have to approve any property transfer, which Nichols said is very likely.
The Associated Press reported, “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 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.”
Nichols added, “The Greenwood District at its height was a center of commerce. 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.”
Despite his plans for the city he leads, Nichols knows that he will receive pushback in a political climate in which President Donald Trump is limiting diversity, equity and inclusion and attempting to rewrite history so that it appears that African-Americans never endured oppression in America, while White people endured racism and oppression from minorities.
Nichols said, “The fact that this lines up with a broader conversation is a tough environment. But that does not change the work we have to do.”
John R. Emerson survived the 1921 race massacre.
Unfortunately, he lost his successful hotel business.
His granddaughter Jacqueline Weary, 65, knows that cash payments are extremely difficult during these tumultuous political times.
However, she wonders how much wealth her family lost when her grandfather’s hotel was destroyed by the angry White mob.
That hotel would be her inheritance if the massacre had not occurred.
Weary said, “If Greenwood was still there, my grandfather would still have his hotel. It rightfully was our inheritance, and it was literally taken away.”
While reparations may not be able to replace everything lost due to racism and hatred, they could alleviate the suffering experienced by generations of African-Americans whose inheritance was taken by White racism and violence.
