Viola Fletcher, Oldest Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Dies at 111

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2. One of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre's last survivors, Viola Ford Fletcher, dies at age 111

One of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre's last survivors, Viola Ford Fletcher, dies at age 111


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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