“Just a couple weeks ago, I launched the Office of Children, Youth and Families, which is the first office in Tulsa with the goal of putting 15,000 more Tulsa kids on a pathway to economic mobility by 2030.”
Why I got into public service actually goes back to my mom and my dad. My mom worked for Baylor, but before that she was a probation officer. Dad was a police officer. And what was interesting was two things; one thing intersects with this event tonight. When I was quite a bit younger, I’m not exactly sure how young I was, but at this event, John Lewis came and spoke. I didn’t really know who John Lewis was at the time, but as he was speaking, I was like, he was with Dr. King. Then I looked him up, and that’s him in the history books, too. So John Lewis became this huge figure for me. And my mother was on the Housing Authority Board here and I remember when I was 15 years old, we went to a Housing Authority conference in Washington, D.C., and got to visit with Chet Edwards, who was our congressman back then, and was really taken by this idea of representing people in that way. Between Mom and Dad, what they did for a living, getting to meet John Lewis at a very young age, and then having that experience in D.C. with Chet Edwards, I think those are the kind of moments where I’m like, ‘Hey, this is something I’d be really interested in doing.’
On Sept. 24, 2023, when I had just launched my campaign, I came to Waco for a fundraiser. Chet was one of the hosts and he came to the event. And I was just blown away. Because when I was 15 years old, Chet Edwards was a big deal, and I still remember him to this day.
We’ve got a clear focus. In Tulsa right now, we have a significant crisis around homelessness and affordable housing, and so when I get back Monday, I’ll be signing an executive order restructuring how we do a lot of our affordable housing work to get 6,000 new affordable units out of the ground in four years. Just a couple weeks ago, I launched the Office of Children, Youth and Families, which is the first office in Tulsa with the goal of putting 15,000 more Tulsa kids on a pathway to economic mobility by 2030. That goal is to end homelessness by 2030, getting a functional zero.
We’re a top-50 city in population, so getting us at the top of the list of the safest big cities in the country, and we have a really interesting jurisdictional challenge in Tulsa with tribes. We’re the largest city in the country that’s on an [American] Indian reservation. All of Tulsa sits on three different reservations, of Cherokee, Osage and Creek Nation. And post-Supreme Court ruling, that’s really made it challenging on some of the jurisdictional issues as it relates to prosecutorial stuff. Working with and co-governing with tribes is the other thing that we’re working on quite a bit at the city.
Monroe Nichols IV was sworn in as the 41st mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Dec. 2, 2024, becoming the first African American in that office, a role which dates back to 1898. Nichols is a native of Waco and graduated from Reicher Catholic High School. He played football at the University of Tulsa and graduated with a degree in political science and economics. He later earned a master’s in public administration from the University of Oklahoma. He was a state representative in Oklahoma from 2016 until 2024.
His father, Monroe Nichols III, died in 1997. His mother, Dr. Ramona Curtis, is the director for workforce programs at Tulsa Community College. Previously, she worked at Baylor University for 20 years.
Nichols was in Waco recently to speak at an NAACP scholarship banquet at the Lee Lockwood Library and Museum. He and WACOAN writer Kevin Tankersley met on that Saturday afternoon at Uncle Dan’s BBQ. Nichols chose that restaurant because it’s run by a close friend of his from high school.
