The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma is preparing to award its black community a $105m (£73.8m) reparations package to address the harms caused by the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, one of the largest and most violent racial attacks in US history.
The plan, by Monroe Nichols, Tulsa’s first black mayor, focuses on community redevelopment and does not involve direct payments to descendants or the two remaining survivors of the attack.
Nichols made the announcement on Sunday during Tulsa’s first ever official Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day.
The funds, raised by a private trust, includes $24m for a housing fund and $60m for a cultural preservation fund focused on “reducing blight”.
“The Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city’s history… hidden from history books,” Nichols said.
It’s OK. They barely teach it in the United States because they don’t want kids to know.
I grew up in Oklahoma and don’t even remember lessons about it. I had Oklahoma History classes and don’t remember anyone spending much time on it. Granted, that was decades ago, but still.
There’s so much missing in the curriculum. Even in my crunchy blue state we never learned about company towns, The Business Plot, Blair Mountain Rebellion, Tulsa, barely anything about Japanese Internment, absolutely nothing about American meddling in South America/The Middle East…