Fletcher fought for better recognition of one of many deadliest incidents of race violence in US historical past.
Printed On 25 Nov 2025
Viola Ford Fletcher, one of many final survivors of Oklahoma’s 1921 Tulsa Bloodbath, has died at age 111.
Regardless of her superior age, Fletcher was a widely known activist due to her work attempting to win justice for the victims of one of many worst episodes of racial violence in United States historical past.
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“In the present day, our metropolis mourns the lack of Mom Viola Fletcher. She was a survivor of one of many darkest chapters in our metropolis’s historical past and endured greater than anybody ought to,” Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols wrote in a Fb put up. “Mom Fletcher carried 111 years of reality, resilience, and style and was a reminder of how far we’ve come and the way far we should nonetheless go.”
Fletcher was seven years outdated on the time of the Tulsa Bloodbath in Oklahoma, a state dwelling underneath the Jim Crow system that segregated the US South from the tip of the 1800s till the Civil Rights Motion of the Nineteen Sixties.
The bloodbath started on Might 31, 1921, when police arrested 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a Black shoeshiner, over allegations that he had assaulted a white lady, in response to a report by the US Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division.
As a survivor of the Tulsa Race Bloodbath, Viola Ford Fletcher bravely shared her story in order that we’d always remember this painful a part of our historical past. Michelle and I are grateful for her lifelong work to advance civil rights, and ship our like to her household. https://t.co/km7RXnDKcW
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 25, 2025
When a gaggle of white males gathered on the courthouse calling for Rowland to be lynched, a gaggle of Black males from a close-by neighborhood responded and tried to guard him earlier than “all hell broke out”, the report mentioned.
Over the following two days, vigilante teams and legislation enforcement looted and burned down 35 blocks of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, which was then dwelling to one of many wealthiest Black communities within the US. The Bureau of Labour Statistics in 2024 estimated that the size of the injury was round $32.2m when adjusted for inflation.
As many as 300 residents of Tulsa had been killed and one other 700 injured, the report mentioned, though the ultimate tally is unknown as a result of many had been buried in unmarked graves.
Survivors like Fletcher and her household had been pressured to depart the realm. Left destitute, her household turned sharecroppers, a type of subsistence work the place farmers give over virtually all their harvest to their landlord.
Rowland was by no means charged, after Sarah Web page, the elevate operator he was accused of assaulting, mentioned that she didn’t wish to prosecute the case.
Regardless of the size of devastation, the Tulsa Bloodbath acquired restricted nationwide consideration till Oklahoma state launched an investigative fee in 1997. Efforts to win compensation for victims in 2001, nevertheless, failed because of the statute of limitations.
On the centennial anniversary of the bloodbath, Fletcher testified earlier than the US Congress in 2021 about her experiences and co-authored a memoir, Don’t Let Them Bury My Story, along with her grandson in 2023.
Fletcher was mourned by US leaders like former President Barack Obama.
“As a survivor of the Tulsa Race Bloodbath, Viola Ford Fletcher bravely shared her story in order that we’d always remember this painful a part of our historical past. Michelle and I are grateful for her lifelong work to advance civil rights, and ship our like to her household,” Obama posted on X.
