>From The Philadelphia Inquirer
February 5, 2000
TULSA RACE RIOT PANEL RECOMMENDS REPARATIONS
White mob killed as many as 300 people, mostly blacks;
Oklahoma commission calls for payments to survivors
by Renee Ruble - Associated Press
TULSA, Okla. - A state commission recommended yesterday that reparations be
paid for one of the nation’s deadliest racial clashes: a little-known, 1921
rampage by a white Tulsa mob that killed as many as 300 people, most of
them black.
The 11-member panel called for direct payments to survivors and victims’
descendants, scholarships, and a tax-checkoff program to fund economic
development in Tulsa’s mostly black Greenwood area and a memorial to the dead.
"This way we will be helping people first, which is what we are supposed to
be doing," said Jim Loyd, a member of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission.
The panel gave no specifics on how much the package would cost and offered
no details on such things as who would get the scholarships.
The recommendation is subject to approval by the Legislature, which created
the commission.
Genevieve Elizabeth Tillman Jackson, an 84-year-old black woman who
survived the riot, said after the vote that she never thought she would see
the day.
"It’s great," she said. "I think the survivors should be helped, and the
children of survivors."
Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
