Tulsa’s “Road to Repair:” $105M Plan Aims to Restore Black Wall Street

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, to the crackdown on history itself, from removing museum exhibits on American slavery to paintings over Washington, D.C.’s, Black Lives Matter mural. Scholars and activists say Trump’s DEI purge is minimizing and even erasing black history. And our next guest is acutely aware of the impact. Monroe Nichols is mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His new initiative, Road to Repair, would grant the city’s black community over a hundred million dollars to address harm’s caused by the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. And Mayor Nichols joins Michel Martin to discuss the importance of confronting the country’s past.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks Christiane. Mayor Nichols, thank you so much for joining us.

MONROE NICHOLS, TULSA, OKLAHOMA MAYOR: Absolutely.

MARTIN: So, before we get into the details of the project that you’re trying to — the effort that you’re making in Tulsa, I just wanted to kind of take you back a little bit. You were actually born in Waco, Texas. You moved to Oklahoma to go to college and also to play football, but mainly to go to college.

NICHOLS: Right.

MARTIN: I just wanted to ask you if you remember — when you heard about the Tulsa race massacre, because this was an historical event that for some people, clearly not for survivors, and the people who lived through it, but for many people had been kind of lost to history. Will you tell people who may not have heard of this what happened? And I’m particularly interested in what you first heard had happened versus what you learned later.

NICHOLS: Yes. I mean, what I first heard it happen is just that there was this — there’s this riot in Tulsa where Black Wall Street was destroyed. That was like the basis of the knowledge, right. And so, I didn’t — you know, didn’t have much beyond that. But for the people who were watching what existed in Tulsa at one time was an entrepreneurial center. It was almost like a city within a city where you had movie theaters and grocery stores and doctor’s offices and attorney’s offices and schools and churches that all thrived and. What was a very segregated society here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Greenwood District would become known as Black Wall Street because of all the commerce in and out of this part of our community. On May 31st and June 1st, a 24-hour period, saw a massacre, that saw a white mob come to Greenwood and burned down, burned to the ground about 37 blocks, about 1,200 black businesses and homes and left thousands of people homeless, and some even put into camps. The death toll is believed to be over 300, although only reported as 36 at the time by local officials. And it is the only documented aerial assault on an American city in our nation’s history. So, it was a massacre of epic proportions. And it destroyed what was perhaps the greatest example of black excellence in economics and entrepreneurship that the country had seen at the time. And that’s what happened in that 24-hour period from May 31st to June 1st.

MARTIN: And the only sort of minor edit I would make to that is people may remember that there’s this — there was a neighborhood in Philadelphia that was also bombed by government officials.

NICHOLS: Yes.

MARTIN: You know, there was a sort of a black radical group that had kind of taken up residence there, but that is also seen as a modern atrocity. But here’s the other thing. You said it — you had initially heard of this as a riot and it has now been known as a massacre, and there’s a real reason that matters. Could you just explain why that matters so much. It’s not just a matter of words, that the nomenclature —

NICHOLS: Yes. No, I mean —

MARTIN: — it’s not just a matter of which word, it has real force.

NICHOLS: Absolutely. It has real force. And it was, in some ways, a matter of legality. A riot meant that it was easier to deny insurance claims for folks who had lost homes and businesses, you know. And honestly, had a lot of people escape any level of culpability. To this day, not one person went to jail because of, you know, their involvement. Until this day not one government has repaid back to help rebuild in ways that were directly associated with bringing back what was lost. There were promises made to do that even directly after the massacre, did not happen. So, naming it a riot all these years meant that there’s a lot of people who got to escape culpability, both on the individual side and the public institutional side. And it wasn’t until, you know, more about this came out, that it was clear this was not a riot. This was a slaughtering of a people. Because we now know the numbers. We now know what was lost. We know now what was refused to be restored, for example. There was certainly a massacre of epic proportions. And to your point about Philadelphia and other places, I think the other great thing about uncovering our history is that we know about other places where things like this happen, maybe not at the same scale where you have 300 dead, but Wilmington, North Carolina is another example of a place where this stuff happened. And I think it’s important that as we consider what we’re doing with the Greenwood Trust that we find good models for how you begin to mitigate the harm because it exists. The legacy of the massacre is very palpable in Tulsa. It doesn’t mean that people don’t like each other and we — you know, we have that, but there’s this subtleness about it that still has this community kind of held by the change of division in ways that just prevent you from uniting in the way that you need to unite, to meet the other big challenges that we face that everybody faces together. And so, I do think it’s really important, even in this moment in our nation’s history, that we’re very honest about the road that has taken to get here, and that we find ways to mitigate harm because that’s the only way that I think we can appropriately move forward.

MARTIN: So, let’s bring up to the present moment. There was a lot of attention paid to the Tulsa race massacre on the centennial of it back in 2021, which acknowledged the hundred years after. There are still some people who were sur who’d survived, who were obviously very small children, you know, at the time. There was a lot of energy around trying to figure out, you know, what to do. But not really happened. I mean, there were negotiations around, some kind of recompense didn’t happen. Now, we’re three years later and you’ve announced a major initiative to kind of — I don’t know, maybe I’ll let you describe it, because it’s a very comprehensive project. What is it that you have in mind?

NICHOLS: Yes. So, just for a little bit of context, you mentioned the centennial back in 2021. And going all the way back to 2001, there was a state commission that recommended certain things the state should do to address the harm caused by the 1921 Tulsa Race massacre. Since then, we’ve had a commission of Beyond the Apology Commission that was created by my predecessor (INAUDIBLE) recommendations. We have advocacy groups like Justice for Greenwood and the Deep Greenwood Foundation. Where I arrived at was a creation of the Greenwood Trust, a private charitable trust that I’m going to be going out and raising capital for $105 million reflective of the very specific $24 million recommendation from the Beyond the Apology Commission, which is made up of descendants around housing and home ownership. A $60 million fund investing direct directly into cultural landmarks and the surviving entities from the massacre, there are some buildings that still stand. So, making sure that we’re investing in those because they’re not always in the best condition for all the reasons that we know. That happens over time. And then, also, investing in the future by investing in college scholarships and business grants and no interest loans to businesses that are owned by descendants, so that in the end, not only are we mitigating harm, but we’re ensuring that we can begin to have those same families, those descendants rebuild the district back to where it was.

MARTIN: So a couple of things here. This really depends on raising a lot of private money. You really think you can do it?

NICHOLS: Absolutely. I think we can do it. You know, we’ve had some conversations up here. We’re spending a year really planning to accept the programs to, you know, appoint trustees, a board of directors that’ll be national and local. And then we’re also evaluating what public assets we have that the trust can be a beneficiary of. So there’s parts of the Greenwood District that the city owns land in. And as we develop, the proceeds from those developments can go back into the, go back into the trust. You know, I think there’s, there’s two things that you have to balance when you think about the political realities of where you’re at. So you got one school of folks who say, well, you know the massacre was a long time ago. I didn’t do anything wrong. Why should I have to pay for it? Right. You got that going. Then you got some people even on the other side who said, well, 104 years later, you know, we really need direct cash payments. So you’re balancing these two things. And so the thought is, you know, what do we have in the way of assets that when developed can produce to feed into the trust? So there’s obviously some skin in the game from the public side. But the idea is if we can create the kind of economic activity with those assets with private capital, we can get to a space where those folks who are the school of thought, who believe that they shouldn’t pay. Understood. That’s fine. We don’t have to fight about that. We’re gonna make investments. We’re gonna do it both privately and we’re gonna do it through the way of using some public assets to get this.

MARTIN: So you were first elected in 2024, as I understand. You just took office in 2024.

NICHOLS: I just took off in December.

MARTIN: And I wanna say you’re also the first black mayor, you know, of Tulsa. And is that why you ran? In part, to achieve something like this, to create this of energy around it?

NICHOLS: It actually wasn’t. I mean, I ran, so our city is dealing with a number of challenges. I ran on ending homelessness in six years, improving student outcomes, expanding our economy, making Tulsa the safest big city in the country and working with tribal nations. Tulsa’s also the largest city in the country. That’s all Indian reservation. That was my focus during the campaign. But about 10 days after I got elected, all these recommendations on how you mitigate harm hit your desk. And you have decision to make. Are you going to ignore them? Are you gonna put ’em aside and say these things aren’t possible? Are you gonna lean into it? And my sense is, is that the four things that I mentioned for the reasons that I ran for mayor, I don’t think they’re possible unless you do this. You, communities who are divided or who have this, this un, these unres, this unresolved trauma, have a hard time meeting the need on all these other big challenges that we have. I think we see us all across the country. So the Greenwood Trust, although very much focused on the descendant community and mitigating harm, I think it’s critical to meeting all those other goals, which are the reasons I ran for office.

MARTIN: In fact, you said that in the speech that you gave announcing the trust or the — your sort of plans for the trust. You said, there is not one Tulsan, regardless of their skin color, who wouldn’t be better off today had the massacre not happened, or if generations before had done the work to restore what was lost. Will you say more about that?

NICHOLS: I think we would’ve been the exception to some of those things you see all across the country. Not every place had a Greenwood district, right? Not every place had that kind of example at that kind of scale of where folks had beaten the odds, even in a segregated society. So, imagine if that had a gone uninterrupted, what it would look like today. Imagine the number of African Americans all across this country now who have some origins of Tulsa who would’ve stayed here, but who left after the massacre. Imagine all those who would’ve been drawn here because of the economic vitality of this community, and imagine what it would’ve meant for our city’s economy overall. We would have been, in some ways, the exception of a lot of places all across the country. And so, I say because of the massacre, because we had the Greenwood District, it certainly should reinforce to us that our problems from an economic standpoint were manmade brought on by the massacre in a lot of ways, right? We had the opportunity to close the wealth gap had the massacre never happened. We had the opportunity to close the achievement gap had the massacre never happened. And we traded that we traded that opportunity to be that shining example of how a city can thrive for everybody on May 31st and June 1st of 1921. And I still do believe it that there’s not one person in the city who wouldn’t be better off had that not happened.

MARTIN: Well, you know, it’s interesting because the pretext for the massacre was at like so many other instances of a violence directed at black people was an incident where it was alleged that, you know, white woman was mistreated. OK? But in the sort of the light of history, the argument was — has subsequently, some people would argue that the reason that this violence took on this kind of vicious mass quality was jealousy. It was economic jealousy.

NICHOLS: Yes.

MARTIN: Is it there was a certain cohort of people who couldn’t tolerate the fact that black people in Greenwood were as successful as they were. Those folks have descendants too. And so, the question becomes, do you think you can persuade those descendants that all these years later, even they will be better off if these initiatives take place?

NICHOLS: Oh, absolutely. I think I would tell the folks who are — you know, who descend from those families who were more the perpetrator side of the massacre that they would’ve benefited a great deal. They wouldn’t have the legacy of something so horrible as a stain on their family’s history. They could talk about openly their family’s history with pride. And I think that’s something that was also taken from those families. And so, like, I believe that Tulsa’s a much different place. I know Tulsa’s a much different place in 2025 than it was in 1921. And I think that’s the message right now, right? Like we are not that far removed from the massacre in a lot of ways. There’s still two survivors that live today. I just visited Mother Fletcher, Mother Randall last Wednesday. Mother Fletcher is very sharp. She’s 111 years old but she is here. The — you know, these — you know, sometimes I think we think about history when you see black and white pictures and you think, oh, my goodness, that was such a long time ago. It wasn’t that long ago, right? When we think about the overarching kind of context of history. And so, yes, I would absolutely tell those folks, they more so than almost anybody would be better off had the massacre not happened. But I think it also should reinforce in them this need to do something about it, right? I think when I think about restoration and righteousness, it’s also about getting right with that family history that those folks might have. I don’t blame them no more than I blame anybody else. So, it’s not a question of blame, but it is a question of courage. Do we have the courage to do something that’s difficult to do at a time where it’s difficult to do it? Do we have the courage to cross the train tracks to talk about the lived experience of our neighbors in the way that we haven’t done before? Because I think when you do that, it makes the Greenwood Trust a very easy sale, right? When you just begin to bind those old wounds, it makes this stuff very — it makes stuff incredibly easy.

MARTIN: Mayor, before we let you go, you — this initiative arrives at a very interesting time when some people would call this a backlash moment to these kinds of initiatives. Do you see headwinds at this point?

NICHOLS: Significant headwinds, but so much of that is less about the national context because we’ve had times where one could argue it would’ve been a better time to have a conversation like this. But it didn’t happen then either. So, there’s never really a right time that we found in 104 years to have this conversation. So, I think you just got to meet it with a whole lot of honesty and transparency and not be afraid to talk about it in certain spaces. Again, and I said this in the speech last Sunday. This is not an effort to assign blame, this is an effort to address the harm caused by an event that is a historical fact. And that’s the reason why we released the 45,000 pages of unreleased documents that we’re sitting on. That’s why we continue the Gray’s investigation. because families deserve closure. And I think everybody can understand that. This is not about going and saying, oh, look how evil certain people are in this community. It’s just like, no. People just need closure to know what happened to their loved one. Even in a moment like this, think about the opportunity for us. While everybody’s having a bunch different conversation about race, imagine if Tulsa, all of us, came together and we made this happen. Just like I said, we would’ve been an outlier had the Greenwood District remain uninterrupted, we would also be an outlier nationally know how people who are all political strides, all different races are coming together saying, this is in our value set and we’re going to do what we can, even with the constraints that we have to make these investments, it actually helps us stand out in ways that I want Tulsa to stand out. This gives us the opportunity to make sure that June 1st wasn’t the end of the story. We get to write new chapters on it in a way that I think we provide the rest of the country with the pathway, with how you can engage this kind of conversations. So, I think that’s an important contribution to make, but it’s also about us getting right with ourselves and making sure we can move this community forward as one, big united city. And so, if we have to take a look back 104 years, to think about how we go forward tomorrow, that’s an investment of time and effort that’s well worth it.

MARTIN: Mr. Mayor, Monroe Nichols IV, the mayor of Tulsa, thank you so much for speaking with us. I do hope we’ll speak again. I’d love to hear how it’s going.

NICHOLS: I can’t wait to do that.