LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Even as a Tulsa native, now Louisville council member says she didn't learn of the Tulsa race massacre until she was a college student.

What You Need To Know

  • Paula McCraney is a member of the Louisville Metro Council & Tulsa native

  • McCraney believes too much of Black history is glossed over

  • McCraney believes survivors and family descendants of the Tulsa race massacre should receive reparations

  • She says everyone must learn about the past before we can move on successfully into the future

Louisville Metro Councilwoman Paula McCraney has been following Pres. Joe Biden's remarks on the Tulsa race massacre closely.

McCraney was born and raised in Tulsa, a graduate of Booker T. Washington High School before studying at Oklahoma State in Stillwater.

“We need to keep this subject in the media. We need to keep it open for generations to come," McCraney told Spectrum News 1 on Tuesday.

"Perhaps," McCraney says, "the country will finally come to terms with what actually happened 100 years ago when white Americans destroyed an entire neighborhood in Tulsa."

Hundreds are estimated killed and buried in mass graves. As Biden pointed out in his address Tuesday in Tulsa, survivors were plunged into financial ruin as hundreds of businesses and homes were burned down and subsequently denied insurance claims. 

“Until we learn our history we are not prepared to embrace one another as human beings, the way the Constitution says all men are created equal," McCraney said.

McCraney, who is African American says she didn't learn of the 1921 race massacre until she was in college.

“Until we learn our history and understand all the atrocities and all of the great things about it we will never move forward," McCraney said. 

McCraney supports reparations for the survivors of the massacre and their descendants.

“Just imagine, though, if that did not happen could they have been millionaires today? They were robbed of their generational wealth of what happened to their parents and their parent’s businesses.”

McCraney says the president's address on Tuesday and the increasing media coverage of the murders are steps toward proper acknowledgment and perhaps healing in what continues to be a country steeped in racial tension.

“Now we have to intentionally tell the story and allow our kids to know what happened. to intentionally teach them about this race massacre.”

On Monday Tulsa's mayor G.T. Bynnum issued an apology commemorating the attack on the Greenwood neighborhood and supports exhuming potential mass grave sites. 

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