Viola Fletcher, who as a child in 1921 saw her affluent Black neighborhood in Oklahoma torched by white citizens in what became known as the Tulsa Race Massacre — one of the most violent acts of racial violence in American history — and who, a century later, testified in Congress to the terror she witnessed in the hope of winning reparations, has died on Monday in Tulsa. She was 111 and the oldest survivor of the attack.
Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Tiffany Crutcher, a close family friend. Her death leaves just one surviving witness to the massacre, Lessie Randle, who is also 111, six months younger than Ms. Fletcher.
The Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Okla., home to about 10,000 people in the early 20th century, became known colloquially as “Black Wall Street” for the successful entrepreneurship of its residents and the prosperity of many families who lived there. The neighborhood was destroyed in the massacre, which led to as many as 300 deaths and mass homelessness.
Ms. Fletcher grew up as a working-class resident of Greenwood. Her stepfather, Henry Ellis, held several jobs at once, from breaking in horses to selling clothes. Viola went to school in Greenwood and attended Wednesday night and Sunday services at a Baptist church. She remembered watching Greenwood men gather to make homemade ice cream on special occasions while women prepared pies and layer cakes.
Early on the morning of June 1, 1921, Viola woke up to a banging sound. She thought it was someone beating a rug, she said, until her mother hollered for her to get out of bed, immediately.
The day before, word had spread in Tulsa that a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner, Dick Rowland, had attempted to rape a 17-year-old white elevator operator, Sarah Page, in the building where she worked.
Ms. Page later denied that Mr. Rowland had done anything wrong, and the case was dropped. But by then, inflamed by the rumors, many of Tulsa’s white citizens were already set on imposing their own idea of justice. Hundreds of heavily armed white men gathered outside the courthouse where Mr. Rowland was being held. Soon, armed Black veterans of World War I arrived as well, seeking to prevent a lynching. A scuffle ensued, and a shot was fired. The next morning, the assault began.
Over 16 hours, nearly three dozen blocks in Greenwood were looted and set ablaze. More than 1,000 homes were destroyed, as were almost all of the district’s Black-owned businesses: theaters, restaurants, hotels, barbershops and the offices of doctors and lawyers and real estate brokers, according to a 2001 report by an Oklahoma commission that had examined the riot.
In December 1921, the American Red Cross determined that close to the entire population of the neighborhood had become homeless. There is still no consensus about the death toll; the Red Cross put it at 55 to 300 people.
Viola’s family fled in a horse and buggy. As they were leaving Tulsa, she recalled, she saw ash falling on the streets, reminding her of snow. She also saw, as other witnesses did, an airplane dropping what looked like firebombs. She passed piles of corpses. She saw a white man blow off a Black man’s head with a shotgun, she said.
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