“She lived through one of the darkest chapters in Tulsa’s history and carried more truth and resilience than anyone should ever have to. Her 111 years remind us of how far we have come—and how far we still must go.”
Washington DC (US), November 25, 2025-BBN Web Staff: Viola Ford Fletcher, among the final living witnesses of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre and a powerful voice for justice, has died at the age of 111. Fletcher dedicated much of her life to ensuring that one of the deadliest outbreaks of racial violence in U.S. history was neither forgotten nor ignored.
Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols expressed his condolences, calling her loss deeply felt by the city. “Today, our city mourns the passing of Mother Viola Fletcher,” he wrote in a Facebook tribute.
“She lived through one of the darkest chapters in Tulsa’s history and carried more truth and resilience than anyone should ever have to. Her 111 years remind us of how far we have come—and how far we still must go.”
Fletcher was just seven years old when racial terror erupted in Tulsa’s Greenwood District on May 31, 1921.
Oklahoma, still governed by Jim Crow segregation at the time, became the site of a devastating attack after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a young Black shoeshiner, was arrested following accusations involving a white woman.
As white mobs gathered outside the courthouse demanding Rowland’s lynching, Black residents mobilised to defend him.
Confrontations escalated, triggering a violent assault on Greenwood, a prosperous Black neighbourhood often called “Black Wall Street.” Federal reports later described the scene as one where “all hell broke out.”
Fletcher spent decades pushing for recognition of the tragedy and advocating for reparations for survivors and descendants.
Her testimony before Congress in 2021 helped reignite national attention on the massacre and its long-lasting consequences.
