Progressive Politics

The new mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Sunday proposed a $100m 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 US history.

The plan by 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”.