"The flagship commemoration event to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre was scrapped after three survivors demanded $1 million each to appear."
"Monday's Remember & Rise event - which was also set to feature John Legend and Stacey Abrams - was called off on Friday after survivors Viola Fletcher, 107, her brother Hughes Van Ellis, 100 and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 106, upped their appearance fee from $100,000 each to $1 million each."
State Sen. Kevin Matthews, the chairman of the [1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission], said after meeting with Solomon-Simmons and other representatives of the survivors, the commission agreed to provide $100,000 to each of the three survivors, along with $2 million in seed money for a reparations fund.
'We raised the money and we were excited the survivors were going to accept these gifts,' Matthews said Friday. 'Unfortunately, on Sunday they reached out and increased the amount of the $100,000-per-survivor gifts to $1 million, and instead of $2 million, they asked for $50 million - $50 million - in seed money. We could not respond to those demands. To be clear, I absolutely want the survivors, the descendants and others that were affected to be financially and emotionally supported. However, this is not the way.'
This is a lesson on reparations: It will never be enough. Do the three centenarians look greedy? I will presume they feel principled. I would not criticize them. They were tapped for use in political theater, a fact made obvious by the use of the term "appearance fee." The much larger demand should be read as a desire to speak in terms of reparations, but as reparations, the exorbitant "appearance fee" looks radically undersized. In retrospect, it would seem that the commission should never have spoken in terms of money at all.
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