Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum apologized on June 1, 2021, for the city’s role in the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, which has now been renamed The Tulsa Race Massacre.

The 43-year-old mayor, George Theron Bynum IV, in addressing the 100-year-old incident on Facebook said, “As the Mayor of Tulsa, I apologize for the city government’s failure to protect our community in 1921 and to do right by the victims of the Race Massacre in its aftermath.  The victims – men, women, young children – deserved better from their city, and I am so sorry they didn’t receive it.”  Mayor Bynum called this “the worst moment in our city’s history.”

Mayor Bynum is the 40th mayor of Tulsa, and to my knowledge, the first to ever publicly admit “the City of Tulsa failed to protect its citizens.”  With this public admission of failure, the mayor has unwittingly, or perhaps purposely, opened the door for multiple lawsuits against the city.

Some lawsuits seeking reparations for the victims were filed in September 2020, and I’m sure there will be many more to come.

If the City of Tulsa is found guilty, and the court orders the city to pay millions of dollars to the victims; where will the money come from?  The city’s only source of revenue is sales tax, traffic fines, building permits, and city utilities; i.e., water, sewer, storm sewer, trash service, etc.

Those fees are collected from every person living and working in Tulsa – and that includes African-American descendants of the 1921 Massacre.  Will those descendants be required to pay their own reparations? 

And what about people who only recently moved to Tulsa — and people who’ve lived in Tulsa for years, but knew nothing about, nor had any connection to the 1921 incident?  Surely no reasonable-thinking person would expect them to pay for the city’s past failures.

Mayor Bynum has opened up Pandora’s Box . . . And it will take someone with the wisdom of King Solomon to make a fair and just decision on this matter (see 1 Kings 3:16-28). 

However, it is obvious by the decisions being made every day, the wisdom of Solomon does not exist in any of our three branches of government; executive, judicial, legislative.  Only God can provide the right answer – let us pray for God to intercede in this vexing, divisive matter.