In the annals of American history, few stories embody the raw resilience of the human spirit quite like that of Viola Ford Fletcher.
Affectionately known as “Mother Fletcher,” the 111-year-old matriarch and oldest living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre passed away on November 24, 2025, surrounded by her loving family in a Tulsa hospital.
Her grandson, Ike Howard, shared the heartbreaking news with CNN, marking the end of an era for one of the last voices to bear witness to one of the darkest chapters of racial violence in the United States.
At 111 years and six months, Fletcher’s life spanned over a century of unimaginable trials, triumphs, and an unyielding quest for justice—a legacy that will echo through generations.
Fletcher’s death leaves Lessie Benningfield Randle, another 111-year-old survivor born just months after her, as the sole remaining eyewitness to the horrors of that fateful night.
In a poignant gesture of sisterhood forged in fire, Randle sent a message through her granddaughter to the Fletcher family in Fletcher’s final days: “She was sorry it was happening and that she loved her,” Randle’s granddaughter, LaDonna Penny, recounted.
Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols, in a somber statement, captured the city’s collective grief: “Mother Fletcher endured more than anyone should, yet she spent her life lighting a path forward with purpose.”
As the world mourns, her story— a testament to survival amid systemic erasure—demands reflection on the enduring scars of the Tulsa Race Massacre and the reparative justice that remains painfully elusive.
The Shadow of Black Wall Street: Unraveling the Tulsa Race Massacre
To grasp the profundity of Viola Fletcher’s life, one must first confront the cataclysm that defined her childhood: the Tulsa Race Massacre of May 31 to June 1, 1921.
In the heart of Oklahoma’s oil-booming Greenwood District—affectionately dubbed “Black Wall Street”—thrived a beacon of Black excellence amid the Jim Crow South.
This 35-square-block enclave was home to approximately 10,000 African Americans, boasting over 600 businesses, including grocery stores, theaters, law offices, and a hospital.
Doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and educators built generational wealth, with homes equipped with indoor plumbing and grand boulevards lined with manicured lawns.
It was a defiant counter-narrative to the era’s rampant segregation, a self-sustaining utopia where Black prosperity wasn’t just possible—it was palpable.
But envy and white supremacy conspired to shatter this idyll. The spark ignited on Memorial Day 1921, when a sensationalized report in the Tulsa Tribune alleged that a Black teenager, Dick Rowland, had assaulted a white elevator operator, Sarah Page. The story, likely fabricated or exaggerated, fueled rumors of a lynching.
As armed white mobs gathered downtown, Black World War I veterans from Greenwood—fresh from defending democracy abroad—rallied to protect Rowland from vigilante justice. What followed was not a skirmish, but a meticulously orchestrated pogrom.
For 16 harrowing hours, thousands of white rioters, deputized by local authorities and backed by private planes dropping incendiary devices, descended upon Greenwood. They looted homes, firebombed businesses, and gunned down residents with impunity.
Machine guns rattled from commandeered National Guard armories; searchlights pierced the night sky as the district burned. Black families, including the Fletchers, were rounded up at gunpoint and interned in makeshift camps.
Official estimates tallied 36 deaths, but historians now peg the toll at 300 or more, with thousands left homeless and the district reduced to smoldering ashes.
No white perpetrators faced charges; instead, Greenwood’s survivors were blamed and billed for the “damages.”
This was no mere riot—it was an act of domestic terrorism, emblematic of the “Red Summer” of 1919 and the broader campaign to suppress Black advancement.
The massacre’s erasure from textbooks and public memory for decades underscores America’s selective amnesia, a theme Viola Fletcher would spend her twilight years combating.
A Child’s Nightmare: Viola Fletcher’s Harrowing Escape
Born on May 10, 1914, in Comanche, Oklahoma, to sharecroppers Lucinda Ellis and John Wesley Ford, Viola was the second of eight children in a family that embodied the grit of rural Black life.
Their modest home lacked electricity, and survival hinged on the backbreaking rhythm of fieldwork.
Seeking opportunity, the Fords relocated to Tulsa’s Greenwood in 1920, where Viola’s stepfather, Henry Ellis, juggled multiple jobs—from horse-breaking to tailoring—to provide stability.
The family settled into the rhythm of community: weekday lessons at a local school, fervent Wednesday night Bible studies, and soul-stirring Sunday services at St. Andrew Baptist Church.
On the evening of May 31, 1921, seven-year-old Viola was tucked into bed, lulled by the hum of a prosperous neighborhood. Gunfire shattered the peace around 11 p.m.
Her mother burst into the room, scooping up Viola and her siblings—including newborn brother U.S. Grant Ford (later known as Hughes Van Ellis)—as chaos erupted outside. “We ran everywhere, trying to get away from the white mobs,” Fletcher later recounted in vivid detail.
Hiding under a table amid raining bullets, the family fled barefoot through smoke-choked streets, dodging flames that devoured their home and the dream of Black Wall Street.
They emerged as refugees in their own land, herded into the fairgrounds like cattle, where National Guard troops guarded them not from harm, but from freedom.
The trauma etched deep: Fletcher would sleep sitting up on her couch with lights blazing for the rest of her life, a vigilant ward against the shadows of that night.
“I have lived in Tulsa since but I don’t sleep all night living there,” she confided in interviews, her words a haunting refrain of unresolved terror.
Forged in Fire: A Life of Quiet Defiance and Unbreakable Bonds
The massacre’s aftermath plunged the Fords into nomadism. Sharecropping tents replaced sturdy walls; formal education ended for Viola after fourth grade, as survival trumped schooling. Yet, resilience ran in her veins.
At 16, she returned to Tulsa, securing a job at a department store where she cleaned and crafted eye-catching window displays—a subtle artistry amid reconstruction’s ruins.
In her early 20s, Viola met Robert Fletcher, a union man whose promises of partnership led to marriage and a westward migration to California.
World War II called her to the shipyards of Los Angeles, where she wielded a welder’s torch, contributing to the war effort in a role reserved for “Rosie the Riveters” like her. Motherhood followed with the birth of son Robert Ford Fletcher.
But domestic bliss fractured under Robert’s abusive hand; Viola, ever the survivor, left him and returned to Oklahoma, settling in Bartlesville north of Tulsa to nurture her family ties.
She remarried, building a life steeped in faith and fortitude. Her brother Hughes Van Ellis, who passed in 2023 at 102, remained a steadfast ally in their shared pursuit of accountability.
Together with Lessie Randle, they formed an unbreakable triumvirate—the last guardians of Greenwood’s ghost.
A Voice for the Voiceless: Advocacy, Testimony, and the Fight for Reparations
As the centennial of the massacre loomed in 2021, Viola Fletcher, then 107, refused to let history be buried.
Co-authoring the memoir Don’t Let Them Bury My Story with grandson Ike Howard, she laid bare the suppressed narratives: “As I grew up, I had to work with White people, but we didn’t dare mention that.”
The book, a clarion call against forgetting, amplified her voice at a time when America grappled with racial reckonings from George Floyd to critical race theory debates.
In May 2021, Fletcher’s testimony before a U.S. House subcommittee pierced the Capitol’s halls.
Seated frail but fierce, she evoked the pandemonium: airplanes droning overhead, bullets whizzing like “bees,” and the acrid stench of burning dreams. “I can’t forget,” she declared, demanding reparations not as charity, but as justice owed.
Joined by Ellis and Randle, she filed a landmark public nuisance lawsuit against Tulsa, its commissioners, and the Oklahoma Military Department—seeking compensation for the generational theft of wealth and opportunity.
Though the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed the case in June 2024, citing statute limitations, Fletcher’s advocacy rippled outward.
It spurred the Department of Justice’s ongoing investigation under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, the first identification of a massacre victim in 2024, and Tulsa’s June 2025 proposal for a $100 million private trust to fund reparative initiatives like economic development and mental health support in Greenwood. “Let the world know,” she urged, her words fueling a “road to repair” that outlives her.
Enduring Legacy: From Survivor to Symbol of Hope
Viola Ford Fletcher’s death at 111 closes a chapter but ignites countless more. She leaves behind a family tapestry woven with her son Robert, grandson Ike, and a community forever altered by her grace.
In Tulsa, murals honor her; nationally, her story educates via documentaries, books, and the Tulsa Historical Society’s archives. As the last survivor, Lessie Randle carries the torch, but Fletcher’s light—unyielding, illuminating—remains.
In an era still wrestling with racial inequities, Mother Fletcher’s life reminds us: Survival is the first revolution; testimony, the second; justice, the unfinished third.
Her final wish? That Greenwood’s ghosts find peace, and Black Wall Street’s promise endures. As we bid farewell, we honor her not with silence, but with action—ensuring the Tulsa Race Massacre’s lessons forge a more equitable tomorrow.
For more on the Tulsa Race Massacre and reparations efforts, explore resources from the Tulsa Historical Society and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors Fund. This article honors Viola Fletcher’s memory through verified historical accounts and family statements.
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