TULSA, Okla. — Viola Fletcher, believed to be one of two remaining survivors of Tulsa's 1921 Race Massacre, died Monday at 111.
"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," Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols said in a written statement. "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.
Viola Fletcher, one of the two last known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, died Monday at age 111. She is seen here at an event honoring survivors and descendants in 2021.
"On behalf of the city of Tulsa, I offer my heartfelt condolences to her family, loved ones, the Greenwood descendant community, and to every Tulsan who saw hope in her journey," Nichols said.
Tiffany Crutcher, a close friend in Viola Fletcher's later years, confirmed the death in a text.
People are also reading…
A longtime Bartlesville, Oklahoma, resident, Fletcher became a public figure late in life, appearing at events in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the massacre, where she was joined two other massacre survivors, her late brother Hughes Van Ellis and Tulsan Lessie Randle. Ellis died in 2023.
Fletcher made trips to Ghana, Africa, and Washington, D.C. For the latter, she testified at a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing discussing the massacre's legacy and the possibility of compensation for survivors and descendants.
Fletcher and her two fellow survivors were the plaintiffs in a state reparations lawsuit filed in 2020 arguing that the massacre created a public nuisance, the effects of which still haunt north Tulsa's Black community. The suit was dismissed in Tulsa County District Court in 2023 and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
Fletcher, who was born Viola Ford in 1914 in Comanche County, grew up in a family of sharecroppers. Her family moved around before later settling in the Tulsa area months before the massacre.
She would’ve been 7 at the time of the 1921 massacre.
Viola Fletcher, right, is shown with fellow 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre survivors Hughes Van Ellis Sr., left, and Lessie Benningfield Randle participating in the June 2021 Black Wall Street Memorial March. Fletcher died Monday at age 111 and Ellis died in 2023, leaving Benningfield as the last known Race Massacre survivor.
“I was asleep as far as I’ve been told,” Fletcher said in a video interview, recalling the massacre. “We were all aroused up, getting up and getting dressed so we could leave.”
She said she remembers hearing “the noise of guns shooting, could smell the smoke, see the fire flashing, and people — a lot of people running and in a hurry to gather up and leave.”
Fletcher later married and moved to California during World War II, where she worked in the shipyards.
After the war, she moved back to Oklahoma and settled in Bartlesville.
Fletcher has talked about her life in a number of interviews, including for Oklahoma State University Library’s Oklahoma Oral History Research Program.
