Tulsa’s newly elected mayor expressed support on Tuesday for increasing aid to victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and their descendants but did not specify how the city should further address one of the most devastating racial attacks in U.S. history.
Monroe Nichols, who became the first Black mayor of Oklahoma’s second-largest city in November, stated his endorsement of “significant elements” of Project Greenwood, a broad initiative named after the once-thriving Black neighborhood destroyed by a white mob.
The initiative is being championed by massacre survivors and their descendants, who last year lost their legal battle at the Oklahoma Supreme Court to compel the city to provide financial compensation for the tragedy. The massacre claimed the lives of up to 300 Black residents and forced thousands of survivors into National Guard-run internment camps.
