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.
The plan… does not involve direct payments to descendants or the two remaining survivors of the attack… The funds, raised by private trust…
So, not really reparations, and not really from the city.
It’s a great initiative, but I don’t know why they are trying to make it something it isn’t. That’s not true, I do know why. “Tulsa reparations” gets more engagement than “Private investment in infrastructure and community resources.” I guess I just wish that journalism didn’t involve so much lying.
So they can say “but we already did reparations!”
wait I thought it wasn’t time yet
Not American - didn’t even know anything about this until Watchmen. I thought it was just made up for the show! Crazy.
American, and Oklahoman here. They must be embarrassed or something because I also never learned it in school growing up within an hour of Tulsa.
I also learned of it from either Watchmen or Lovecraft County. I forget which I saw first.
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…
It was actually only one of dozens of similar atrocities that happened around that time. In fact, 1919 is referred to as “Red Summer,” for the number of organized attacks on black neighborhoods.
I live in the Orlando area, and a local news station did an extended story on the 100th anniversary of a local massacre in Ocoee,, caused when a black citizen insisted on voting in the 1920 Presidential election. 30-80 black citizens were murdered, their properties confiscated, and the rest driven from town. Their stolen properties were distributed among prominent white members of the town, whose families still own the properties to this day.
Like most of these massacres, the Ocoee massacre was almost totally forgotten, by design. They weren’t talked about, and younger generations weren’t told about them, neither in school, nor at home. Discussion was harshly discouraged. Within a couple generations, they were mostly forgotten.
As a college-educated American adult, I didn’t know about it until Watchmen either… And I know I’m far from the only one.
If it was ever mentioned in school, the context was, “Tulsa race riots,” putting the blame squarely on the victims.
But wait, there’s more: May I present, America’s only successful coup d‘état.
American. Same experience… Yeah…
I’ll recommend “The Warmth of Other Suns” if you want a beautifully written history of racial history across the families / time periods in the US. Definitely helped me personalize & put together a lot of pieces left out of my education.
American here and that’s how I learned about it too.
Of course the trash state comes up with some paltry sum
