This year marks the 105th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre which took place between May 1 and June 1, 1921, in Tulsa’s Greenwood District.
As a way to look towards the future while commemorating the past, Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols IV announced the formation of The Greenwood Trust in June 2025, as part of the city’s Road to Repair – a civic commitment that translates into structured, independent action.
“The Greenwood Trust is a private, charitable trust dedicated to economic growth and making sure the massacre survivors and descendants thrive,” Nichols says. “The trust was designed to invest in things like housing, cultural preservation, education and entrepreneurship.”
Nichols recounts that 1,300 houses and businesses were burned to the ground during the massacre.
“So, the idea that we would invest ourselves back into these things makes a lot of sense, and in a way that we can engage with folks in this conversation,” he shares.
Thus far, the trust has been well received by local groups as well as high-profile national foundations.
“We think of this as reparative economic development, and taking areas that once were thriving but now are not thriving, and we’re doing it so that the area would be much better if this disaster never happened,” Nichols says.
He describes how the event stole pride and opportunity from victims and their descendants.
“This is a city where people came here and beat the odds when it was very difficult for Black folks in the early 1900s,” he explains. “We have a really special story and that story cannot end in a massacre.”
The Greenwood Trust has three focus areas. The Housing Fund centers on housing and homeownership benefits for the massacre survivors and descendants. The Cultural Preservation Fund targets improving buildings, reducing blight and helping implement the Kirkpatrick Heights-Greenwood Master Plan. The Legacy Fund allows for development of trust-owned land, acquisition of land to benefit survivors and descendants, scholarship funding and economic development.
As well, the 1921 Graves Investigation continues, with excavation and exhumation of Oaklawn Cemetery graves where victims were buried. Nichols says 91 graves have been found thus far. Tulsa is implementing a Department of Justice grant involving DNA and genealogical analysis of those exhumed. Then a process begins to find and notify descendants who may choose to have the victims reinterred or choose to inter them someplace else.
“We’ve taken the darkest day and a half in our city’s history and we’ve determined that we’re going to lean into it in a way that is not divisive, but that repairs harm,” Nichols says. “What a great contribution on the victims’ behalf that it was Tulsa that came back, providing a pathway to the future.”
Educating the Youth
Tulsa Public Schools’ (TPS) public relations director Kyle Boone says the district has integrated relevant, age-appropriate instructional materials on Greenwood history, Black Wall Street and the 1921 massacre into grades 3-12 curriculum.
TPS is also partnering with Greenwood Rising Black Wall Street History Center, which hosts students for interactive tours, and TPS supports the center through the 2021 bond.
“TPS is committed to embracing our past, reflecting on the present and preparing students for the future,” says Boone.
