Viola Fletcher, Oldest Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Dies at 111
Source: New York Times
Viola Fletcher, Oldest Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Dies at 111
At 7, she bore witness to one of American history's most violent spasms of racial violence. She was 106 when the nation reckoned with the crime.
Viola Fletcher in 2023. The Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Okla., that became known as "Black Wall Street" took years to build -- and one night of violence to destroy. Mary Altaffer/Associated Press
By Alex Traub
https://www.nytimes.com/by/alex-traub
Nov. 24, 2025
Updated 5:05 p.m. ET
Viola Fletcher, who as a child in 1921 saw her affluent Black neighborhood torched by white citizens in what became known as the Tulsa Race Massacre -- one of the most violent acts of racial violence in American history -- and who, a century later, testified in Congress to the terror she witnessed in the hope of winning reparations, has died. She was 111 and the oldest survivor of the attack. ... Her death was announced on Monday in a statement by Mayor Monroe Nichols of Tulsa. It did not say where or when she died. Her death leaves just one surviving witness to the massacre, Lessie Evelyn Benningfield, who is also 111, six months younger than Ms. Fletcher.
The Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Okla., home to about 10,000 people in the early 20th century, became known colloquially as "Black Wall Street" for the successful entrepreneurship of its residents and the prosperity of many families who lived there. The neighborhood was destroyed in the massacre, which led to as many as 300 deaths and mass homelessness.
Ms. Fletcher grew up as a working-class resident of Greenwood. Her stepfather, Henry Ellis, held several jobs at once, from breaking in horses to selling clothes. Viola went to school in Greenwood and attended Wednesday night and Sunday services at a Baptist church. She remembered watching Greenwood men gather to make homemade ice cream on special occasions while women prepared pies and layer cakes.
Early on the morning of June 1, 1921, Viola woke up to a banging sound. She thought it was someone beating a rug, she said, until her mother hollered for her to get out of bed, immediately. ... The day before, word had spread in Tulsa that a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner, Dick Rowland, had attempted to rape a 17-year-old white elevator operator, Sarah Page, in the building where she worked.
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The Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood was burned to the ground during the Tulsa Race Massacre in June 1921. Around 10,000 people became homeless and as many as 300 died, according to the American Red Cross. Universal History Archive/Getty Images
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Alex Traub is a reporter for The Times who writes obituaries.
https://www.nytimes.com/by/alex-traub
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/us/viola-fletcher-dead.html
Hat tip, PBS News Hour
= new reply since forum marked as read
One of the last known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Oklahoma has died
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By JAMIE STENGLE - Associated Press Nov 24, 2025 Updated 22 mins ago
DALLAS (AP) — Viola Ford Fletcher, who as one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Oklahoma spent her later years seeking justice for the deadly attack by a white mob on the thriving Black community where she lived as a child, has died. She was 111. ... Her grandson Ike Howard said Monday that she died surrounded by family at a Tulsa hospital. Sustained by a strong faith, she raised three children, worked as a welder in a shipyard during World War II and spent decades caring for families as a housekeeper.
Tulsa was mourning her loss, said Mayor Monroe Nichols, the first Black leader of Oklahoma’s second-largest city. “Mother Fletcher endured more than anyone should, yet she spent her life lighting a path forward with purpose.”
She was 7 years old when the two-day attack began on Tulsa’s Greenwood district on May 31, 1921, after a local newspaper published a sensationalized report about a Black man accused of assaulting a white woman. As a white mob grew outside the courthouse, Black Tulsans with guns who hoped to prevent the man’s lynching began showing up. White residents responded with overwhelming force. Hundreds of people were killed and homes were burned and looted, leaving over 30 city blocks decimated in the prosperous community known as Black Wall Street.
“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,” she wrote in her 2023 memoir, “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story.” ... As her family left in a horse-drawn buggy, her eyes burned from the smoke and ash, she wrote. She described seeing piles of bodies in the streets and watching as a white man shot a Black man in the head, then fired toward her family. {snip} The attack went largely unremembered for decades. In Oklahoma, wider discussions began when the state formed a commission in 1997 to investigate the violence.
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(had this source - Viola Ford Fletcher, oldest survivor of Tulsa Race Massacre, dies at age 111)
But what I was going to post (at least a variant of it) as a comment was this -
Thank you for posting. 
