Tulsa's new mayor backs 'significant elements' of plan for city to do more over Tulsa Race Massacre Tulsa’s new mayor on Tuesday backed doing more for victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and their descendants but stopped short of saying how he believes the city should further address one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history.
Monroe Nichols, who in November was elected the first Black mayor of Oklahoma's second-largest city, said in a statement he supports “significant elements” of a broad proposal dubbed Project Greenwood, named for the city's once-thriving Black district that was destroyed by a white mob.
Other proposals in the plan include a preference program for descendants for city jobs and contracts; an exemption for descendants from paying city taxes or utilities; and a detailed audit of any land the city owns in the historic Greenwood district and how it was obtained.
The sweeping plan is pushed by survivors of the massacre and their descendants, who last year were rejected at the Oklahoma Supreme Court in their effort to force the city to make financial amends for one of the nation's worst single acts of violence against Black people.
The proposals in Project Greenwood include calls to financially compensate two 110-year-old women who are the last two known living survivors of the massacre.
