Viola Ford Fletcher, one of last survivors of Tulsa race massacre, dies aged 111 | Tulsa race massacre

Viola Ford Fletcher, one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre in Oklahoma and who spent her later years seeking justice for a deadly attack by a white mob on the thriving Black community in which she lived as a child, has died. He was 111 years old.

He died surrounded by his family at a hospital in Tulsa, his grandson Ike Howard said Monday. Surviving her strong faith, she raised three children, worked as a welder in a shipyard during World War II, and cared for families as a maid for decades.

Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols said the city mourns his loss. “Anne Fletcher endured more than anyone should, but she spent her life shining a path forward with purpose,” he said in a statement.

He was seven years old when the two-day assault on Tulsa’s Greenwood district began on May 31, 1921, after a local newspaper published a sensational story about a Black man accused of attacking a white woman. As a white mob grew outside the courthouse, armed Black Tulsans began to show up, hoping to prevent the man from being lynched. White residents responded with overwhelming force. Hundreds of people were killed, houses were burned and looted; About 35 city blocks were destroyed, leaving the prosperous community known as Black Wall Street.

“I can never forget the charred remains of our once thriving community, the smoke billowing in the air and the terrified faces of my neighbors,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir. Don’t Let Them Bury My Story.

He wrote that his eyes burned from smoke and ash as his family left in a horse-drawn carriage. He described seeing piles of bodies in the streets and watching a white man shoot a Black man in the head and then shoot at his family.

He told the Associated Press: report The year his memoirs were published, he said that fear of retaliation influenced his years of near silence about the massacre. He co-wrote the book with his grandson, Howard, who said he had to convince him to tell his story.

“We don’t want history to repeat itself, so we need to educate people about what happened and try to get people to understand why you need to be made whole, why you need to be repaired,” Howard told the AP in 2024. “The generational wealth that was lost, the house, all the belongings, everything disappeared overnight.”

The attack went largely unremembered for decades. In Oklahoma, broader discussions began when the state established a commission to investigate the violence in 1997.

Testifying before Congress about her experiences in 2021, Fletcher joined her younger brother, Hughes Van Ellis, and another massacre survivor, Lessie Benningfield Randle, in a lawsuit seeking compensation. Oklahoma’s supreme court dismissed the case in June 2024, saying his complaints did not fall under the state’s public nuisance law.

“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 Randle said in a statement at the time. Van Ellis died a year ago at the age of 102.

The justice department’s review, initiated under the Emmett Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act and published in January 2025, outlined the scope and impact of the massacre. He concluded that while federal prosecution may have been possible a century ago, there is no longer a way to bring a criminal case.

The city is exploring ways to help descendants of massacre victims without making direct cash payments. Some of the last survivors, including Fletcher, received donations from groups but no payments from the city or state.

Born in Oklahoma on May 10, 1914, Fletcher spent most of his early years in Greenwood. In his memoirs, he wrote that it was an oasis for Black people during segregation. He said his family had a nice home and the community had everything from doctors to grocery stores, restaurants and banks.

His family, who had to flee during the massacre, started living in tents as sharecroppers in the fields. He could not finish school after the fourth grade.

She wrote in her memoirs that when she was 16, she returned to Tulsa, where she found a job cleaning and window dressing at a department store. She later met Robert Fletcher and they married and moved to California. He wrote that he worked as a welder in a Los Angeles shipyard during World War II.

She eventually left her physically abusive husband and gave birth to their son, Robert Ford Fletcher. Longing to be closer to his family, he returned to Oklahoma and settled in Bartlesville, north of Tulsa.

Fletcher wrote that her faith and close-knit Black community provided her with the support she needed to raise her children. He had another son, James Edward Ford, and a daughter, Debra Stein Ford, from other relationships.

Howard said she has worked as a housekeeper for decades, doing everything from cooking to cleaning to taking care of children in these homes. He worked until he was 85 years old.

He eventually returned to Tulsa to live. Howard said his grandmother hopes the move will help in the fight for justice.

Howard said the reaction his grandmother got when she started talking was therapeutic for him.

“This whole process has been rewarding,” Howard said.