Viola Ford Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, died at 111 years old on November 24, surrounded by family in a Tulsa hospital.

Fletcher was just 7 years old during the attack that destroyed Tulsa’s prosperous Black Wall Street; her memoir recounts the terror and devastation she witnessed. She spent her life seeking justice, testifying before Congress and joining a reparations lawsuit later dismissed by Oklahoma’s Supreme Court.

The Tulsa Race Massacre was a two-day-long white supremacist terrorist massacre that took place in the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, between May 31 and June 1, 1921. 

Mobs of Whites, some of whom had been appointed as deputies and armed by city government officials, attacked Black residents and destroyed homes and businesses. The event is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. Black soldiers fought Whites, but they were overpowered.

The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood—at the time, one of the wealthiest Black communities in the United States, colloquially known as “Black Wall Street.”^[19]

More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals, and as many as 6,000 Black residents of Tulsa were interned, many of them for several days. 

The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 deaths. The 2001 Tulsa Reparations Coalition examination of events identified 39 dead, 26 Black and 13 White, based on contemporary autopsy reports, death certificates, and other records. The commission reported estimates ranging from 36 to around 300 dead.

The massacre began after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a Black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a White 21-year-old elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building, an accusation that wasn’t true.