"OKLAHOMA CITY, Feb. 28 - George Monroe was only 5 years old during the deadly 1921 Tulsa race riots, but he can still smell the smoke and feel the terror of white men thundering through his home, torching draperies while he hid under a bed.

Today, Monroe, 84, made the 90-mile trip here from Tulsa in a driving ice storm to witness the unveiling of a definitive study on the riots prepared by a state commission and presented to government officials. But he didn't like what he heard on the matter of restitution for survivors of one of the deadliest race riots in U.S. history.

Eight decades after White mobs destroyed a thriving black community and randomly Wed as many as 300 blacks, the Tulsa Race Riot Commission strongly concluded that local government bears significant responsibility for the violence and that restitution is due.

But legislative leaders today - though acknowledging that the riots were wrong - awkwardly sidestepped taking a position on reparations at an elaborately staged news conference, demonstrating how contentious the issue promises to be as the state lawmakers prepare to take up the matter.

Republican state Sen. Robert Milacek, a member of the commission who opposes restitution, has refused to sign the report over the recommendations and boycotted the news conference. 'I feel it is a mistake to take one event in history and pay reparations. It's a terrible precedent,' he said.

Conversely, Monroe pronounced that he was 'not happy,' after listening to the officials because he expected some sort of commitment on compensation today. 'somebody has to pay something. ...My father lost everything, his business ... our home.'

Joe Bums, 84, another survivor and a member of the 11-person commission, said, 'It seems that everyone is waiting for someone else to take the lead.'

Gov. Frank A. Keating (R) said he personally supported. direct payments to the 120 survivors of the bloody riots if the report contained persuasive' evi. dence of state culpability. House Speaker Larry Adair (D) and Senate President Pro Tempore Stratton Taylor declined to assess the prospects of a reparations measure, saying they had not talked to their colleagues or read the report.

The document says law enforcement officials did little to stem the violence and, in many cases, contributed to the bloody events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, when thousands of whites charged into the community of Greenwood.

The riots were triggered by an encounter between Dick Rowland, a black youth who worked as a shoeshine boy, and Sarah Page, a white teenager who operated a downtown elevator. It is now believed that Rowland, who rode the elevator May 30, may have accidentally tripped and bumped into Page, causing her to scream.

Rowland was arrested, and within hours, more than 1,000 agitated white men congregated at the jail. Rumors of a lynching raced through Greenwood, prompting aimed black men also to head for the jail. Tempers flared, and a growing white mob eventually raced across the railroad tracks, which segregated Tulsa, torching and looting homes and randomly shooting blacks.

At the eruption of violence, the commission concluded, 'law enforcement officils deputized white men who contributed to the violence.' Furthermore, the commission noted: 'People, some of them agents of the government, also dliberately burned, otherwise damaged ... virtually every other structure, including churches, schools, businesses.'

In an initial, preliminary recommendation, the commission suggested the state and city pay $33 million in restitution, which was not well-received. That plan was modeled after the state of Florida's 1994 agreement with victims of the 1923 "Rosewood Massacre," when a black town was destroyed at the hands of angry whites. In that case, the state paid the 11 or so survivors $150,000 each and acknowledged that the government failed to protect its citizens.

In February last year, the commission dramatically scaled back its proposal to include payments to survivors and descendants, a memorial and funds for the Greenwood community. No dollar amount was proposed. Today's final report ends an intense four-year effort to document the history and horrors of 1921. The riots became an embarrassing blot on Tulsa s history rarely talked about until the mid-1990s, when the community commemorated the 75th anniversary and the national media focused on it.

The commission's mandate was to establish a historical record by locating survivors, quantifying the death count and assessing property loss. It was also the first public opportunity for blacks and Whites to openly talk about the riots.

Most survivors favor reparations, but they told the commission that their first wish was supply to have the events of 1921 acknowledged. Still, said Eddie Faye Gates, who interviewed most of the survivors, many believe reparations are morally the right thing to do. 'Money is the proof that something really happened,' said Gates, a commission member. 'Just to say something bad happened is nothing but a cop-out' " (Lois Romano, The Washington Post, March 1, 2001)