Tulsa Massacre

They were children when Black Wall Street burned in 1921, and now, over a century later, a family funder from over a thousand miles away has given them $1 ...

But even as national grantmakers like MacArthur, Hewlett, Omidyar and the William T. Grant Foundation continue to back the broader reparations movement, it’s incumbent on local funders to interrogate their own histories and ask how they can support survivors of racist violence — and those survivors’ descendants — in their own backyards. Another funder, the Zarrow Family Foundation, formed a fund to honor victims and combat social injustice impacting people of color in the region. Animal rights and advocacy is also a big focus for the Mitzens — earlier this year, they gave $1 million to the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society, the largest gift in its history. Aside from their donation to the Tulsa survivors, the Mitzens’ philanthropy is local, and may well stay that way. But the Mitzens’ gift isn’t the only recent case where a private donor or institution has offered some form of targeted recompense for past racial injustice. And yet, they’re the ones who finally gave Fletcher, Randle and Van Ellis substantive compensation in the form of a $1 million donation to benefit the three survivors and their families. Its work has partly focused on buying local businesses and operating them such that some or all of their profits go toward charity — hence the name of the organization. The couple founded the Business for Good Foundation in 2020 with an initial contribution of about $12.2 million. The donation is also no replacement for broader, government-funded reparations for racial violence and racial injustices, including but not limited to slavery. Founded on wealth derived from the success of several healthcare marketing companies Ed Mitzen started, the family’s growing philanthropy is centered in and around the Albany capital region of New York. Some of it is also going toward college education for the three survivors’ younger relatives. No white person was ever arrested or charged, and the tragedy was largely unknown across the U.S. until recently; attempts to secure reparations for the survivors from city and state coffers have proven futile.

From 'The Legacy of Black Wall Street' to 'Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer,' there are several programs chronicling Greenwood's creation and its tragic ...

Watch HERE. Watch HERE. With the acclaim and popularity of recent HBO shows such as Watchmen and Lovecraft Country, there has been a newfound public interest in the incident, spawning several conversations, think pieces, and documentaries.

It's been 101 years since Tulsa Race Massacre. We interviewed one of the survivors: 'We want to live like other people live. ... We're human beings.'

In fact, I mean, our public nuisance case is a case for the entire community, a public nuisance case saying we want to be made whole as a community, a part of being made whole as a community may include obviously some type of financial compensation to what we're asking for, a financial victims' compensation fund. And one of the things we want to see, all of us that's involved in this issue, we want the highway removed, because it stands there as a symbol of our oppression and our segregation. We're going to fight to the finish. He also talked about we want to be treated as first-class Americans. Because first-class citizenship means when there's a harm, there's a remedy to fix the harm. Ellis: Probably all of them would have had the chance to go to school and get an education. ... I had three daughters who managed to go to school and get an education. Also, I served in United States Army. I served in a segregated Army. I went to war ... so I survived twice: survived the massacre; survived the United States Army. ... I want to be made whole. We moved to Kansas, two or three cities in Kansas. Sometimes we'd get a chance to help bail the hay and chop the cotton and stuff like that. Some of the kids ... got the chance to go to school. If I had had a chance to go to school and get a college education, I might have been a contractor. We went to the river to wash our clothes, hung them out on the limbs to dry. And when their family had to flee as he talks about in a horse and buggy, they had to go 25 (or) 30 miles east of Tulsa to a little place called Claremore. And they lived in a tent.

In 1921, a white mob descended on the neighborhood of Greenwood, home to 10000 residents at the time, and destroyed 35 city blocks.

One of the wealthiest Black men in Tulsa, O.W. Gurley, lost $157,783 in the riot, according to city commission reports. It was the first time a sitting U.S. president had visited the site. However, not all residents filed insurance claims or took the city to court. A generation of Black wealth was extinguished.” In 1921, a white mob descended on the neighborhood of Greenwood—dubbed “Black Wall Street”—and destroyed 35 city blocks. The city rejected all but one of them.