A Century After Tulsa Race Massacre, City Creates Reparations Committee

More than a century after one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history left scores of Black people dead in Tulsa, the mayor announced Thursday that the city would form a commission to study how reparations could be made to survivors and their descendants.

The announcement was followed Friday by news that an Oklahoma archaeology team had exhumed another set of human remains with a gunshot wound — a haunting reminder of the mob violence that ripped through 35 square blocks of what was once a wealthy Black community. The remains were the third set with a gunshot wound discovered since scientists began excavating a cemetery in 2020 to try to identify the Tulsa Race Massacre’s victims.

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“Our fellow Tulsans were murdered, their homes and businesses torched, their bodies buried in unmarked graves so their loved ones couldn’t find them,” Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum (R) said at a news conference Thursday. {snip}

The committee’s creation was prompted by a 2023 report by the city that recommended more than a half-dozen types of reparations. Descendants of victims and Tulsa residents said educational opportunities — scholarships and tuition assistance — and direct cash payments were the most crucial reparations, according to the report.

The 13-member committee, called the Beyond Apology Commission, will forge a plan for a housing equity program that is meant to benefit massacre survivors, their descendants and residents of North Tulsa, particularly the Greenwood District and surrounding neighborhoods. Bynum, who will select the committee members, has previously demurred on the idea of financial reparations.

In 2020, he told Tulsa-based TV station KTUL that distributing cash payments “divides the community on something that we really need to be united around.” Debate over compensation led to the cancellation of an event commemorating the bloodshed the next year.

On Thursday, Bynum said he wants the committee to explore types of reparations beyond cash payments.

“We’re not just establishing a study group,” he said at the news conference, adding that he wants city funds to promote homeownership “and advance the goal of creating intergenerational wealth” among the massacre’s descendants.

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