Viola Fletcher, the oldest survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which claimed the lives of 300 people and seared an ugly memory for generations of Black Oklahomans and Black America, has passed away at the age of 111.
Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols confirmed Fletcher’s passing, saying Fletcher “endured more than anyone should.”
“Today, our city mourns the loss of Mother Viola Fletcher – a survivor of one of the darkest chapters in our city’s history,” he wrote on Instagram. “Mother Fletcher endured more than anyone should, yet she spent her life lighting a path forward with purpose.”
“Mother Fletcher carried 111 years of truth, resilience, and grace and was a reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we must still go,” he added. “She never stopped advocating for justice for the survivors and descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and I hope we all can carry forward her legacy with the courage and conviction she modeled every day of her life.”
Fletcher had been living in North Texas when she passed, but never forgot the pain of the 1921 massacre. “It will be something I’ll never forget,” she told CBS in a 2021 interview commemorating the 100th anniversary of the incident as Tulsa’s Greenwood District. The district, affectionately known as “Black Wall Street,” was destroyed by a White mob after a Black man was accused of assaulting a White woman.
At least 300 Black residents were killed and thousands more were left unhoused in the two-day massacre from May 31, 1921, to June 1, 1921, as White rioters burned buildings, attacked Black members of the community, and looted local businesses. At one point, biplanes dropped bombs on residences, the first known aerial bombing of a city in U.S. history.
In total, more than 35 city blocks were destroyed, and the National Guard detained 6,000 people.
Lessie Benningfield Randle, who turned 111 earlier this month, is now the only survivor of the Tulsa Massacre. Fletcher’s brother, Hugh Van Ellis, died in 2023.
Randle, Fletcher, and Ellis were among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the city of Tulsa and the county in 2020 as the survivors sought reparations for what had occurred to them.
The three testified before Congress in 2021, vividly recalling the days their town was under siege.
“I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams,” Fletcher told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties in 2021.
Although current Tulsans argued they should not be forced to pay any form of reparations because the event happened more than a century ago, Nichols revealed a $105 million package to commemorate the first Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day.
