Photo: AFP
Viola Ford Fletcher, one of the last and oldest survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, has died, per HuffPost. She was 111.
On Monday (November 24), Fletcher’s grandson, Ike Howard, said his grandmother passed away surrounded by family at a Tulsa hospital.
Born May 10, 1914, Fletcher spent her early childhood in Tulsa's Greenwood district, a thriving Black neighborhood home to "Black Wall Street." Fletcher was 7 when a white mob destroyed the community on May 31, 1921, killing hundreds of Black people and wrecking 30 blocks of homes and buildings.
“I could never forget the charred remains of our once-thriving community, the smoke billowing in the air, and the terror-stricken faces of my neighbors,” Fletcher wrote in her 2023 memoir, “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story.”
Fletcher said fear of retaliation kept her silent for decades, but Howard, who co-wrote her memoir, encouraged her to speak out about the injustice.
“We don’t want history to repeat itself… The generational wealth that was lost, the home, all the belongings, everything was lost in one night,” Howard said in 2024.
Fletcher spent her final years in Tulsa advocating for reparations and justice following the 1921 massacre. Howard said speaking publicly became "therapeutic" for Fletcher.
“This whole process has been helpful,” he said.
Fletcher testified before Congress in 2021 and joined two other survivors in a reparations lawsuit, which the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed in 2024.
“For as long as we remain in this lifetime, we will continue to shine a light on one of the darkest days in American history,” Fletcher and survivor Lessie Benningfield Randle said then.
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