Officials in Tulsa, Oklahoma, announced the creation of a new commission to recommend how reparations can be made for a 1921 massacre that destroyed a thriving Black community in the city.
The panel will review a 2023 report for the city and a 2001 report by a state commission on Tulsa Race Massacre in which a white mob killed as many as 300 Black residents and burned the city’s Greenwood District to the ground. Both reports called for financial reparations, which Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum has opposed.
Reparations will almost certainly include a housing equity program, which would serve survivors of the massacre as well as descendants of victims and other residents of north Tulsa, where the massacre occurred. Only two known survivors are still alive.
The massacre occurred over two days in 1921, a long-suppressed episode of racial violence that destroyed a community known as Black Wall Street and ended with thousands of Black residents forced into internment camps overseen by the National Guard.
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