How Tulsa’s Mayor Pushed Through Racial Justice Compensation
The city’s first Black mayor talks about plans to compensate victims of the destructive Tulsa Race Massacre more than 100 years later.
In June, Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols pulled off what decades of lawsuits were unable to: He found a way to compensate descendants of the victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
Through a private charitable trust, the city will raise funds from both private and philanthropic sources with the goal of securing $105 million in assets — some in cash, some in land — by June 1, 2026, the 105th anniversary of the massacre. During that violent episode of Tulsa’s history in 1921, a mob of white Tulsans burned down the 35-acre Greenwood neighborhood, an African-American community that at the time was so flush with wealth that it was known across the US as “Black Wall Street.” Hundreds of Black Tulsans were killed during the ordeal, while more than 1,200 homes, businesses and other Black-owned properties were scorched, aided in part by city and state law enforcement.