Earlier this month, former Oklahoma state Rep. Monroe Nichols (D) was elected the first Black mayor of Tulsa. Among other plans, Nichols wants to help heal a community still grappling with the legacy of a racist massacre that killed at least 300 people more than a century ago.
The Department of Justice recently announced a review of the Tulsa Race Massacre, a two-day event in 1921 when a white mob terrorized a 35-square block area known as “Black Wall Street,” which consisted mostly of affluent homes and thriving Black-owned businesses.
There has been a sustained push in Tulsa for the city government to issue reparations of some kind to the descendants of those affected by tragedy, and to the larger community of Greenwood, the neighborhood that now stands on the site of the massacre. Nichols told HuffPost he supports the effort to resolve the pain that descendants of the massacre ― and the two remaining survivors of the event, both now over 100 years old ― still face. But he…
