Viola Ford Fletcher had just turned seven years old when a violent White mob terrorized her community in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as Black Wall Street, for two days, on May 31 and June 1, 1921. As her family fled with the clothes on their backs, Ms. Fletcher witnessed dead Black bodies in the streets and her neighborhood ablaze.
She constantly relived the terror she experienced; she and her family were impoverished for the rest of their lives, and her emotional and physical distress continued long after the massacre. She testified before Congress in 2021 about her and her family’s experience.
Ms. Fletcher, who was the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, passed away on Nov. 24 at the age of 111 without ever having received justice.
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, was 23 years old, living in Middle Georgia, when the massacre happened. He later penned articles on the need for justice for the Black man and woman of America.
“We want justice. Equal justice under the law. We want justice applied equally to all, regardless of creed or class or color,” He wrote in “The Muslim Program,” in Point No. 2 of “What The Muslims Want,” published in his book, “Message to the Blackman in America.”
The Muslim Program is also published on the inside back page of each edition of The Final Call. The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad defined justice as the principle of fair dealing.
“What is justice? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that justice is the principle of fair dealing. According to Webster’s Dictionary, justice is ‘fairness, fair play, fair-mindedness.’
Justice is ‘evenhandedness, impartiality, objectivity’; it’s a ‘lack of bias, a lack of prejudice,’” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, said in a message titled, “Justice is the Joy of Freedom,” delivered on Nov. 20, 2010, in Rockford, Illinois.
“If you love God and love truth above it all, then you’ll stand up for what is right regardless of the consequences,” he added. “Truth is never to be sacrificed to any interest, but every interest must be sacrificed to the truth.”
Despite the U.S. government’s refusal to issue justice, accountability or tangible reparations to survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre and their descendants, Ms. Fletcher worked to ensure the story of Tulsa lived in America’s memory.
According to reporting by the Associated Press, her grandson Ike Howard said that she died surrounded by family at a Tulsa hospital. During her life, she worked as a welder in a shipyard during World War II and spent decades caring for families as a housekeeper, AP reported.
“Mother Fletcher endured more than anyone should, yet she spent her life lighting a path forward with purpose,” said Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols, according to AP.
Two “Celebration of Life” memorial services were held for Ms. Fletcher on Nov. 29: an afternoon service at the Bartlesville Community Center in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and an evening service at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa.
Friends, family members and supporters commended Ms. Fletcher’s fight for justice for survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre and their descendants and for spending the remainder of her years speaking truth to power. They urged attendees to honor her life by living a righteous life and continuing the fight.
Her living family—her son, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren—still carry on the legacy of Tulsa.
Lessie Benningfield Randle, who worked alongside Ms. Fletcher in the fight for justice and accountability, is the last living survivor of the massacre. She turned 111 in November. She wrote a memoir in 2023 titled “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story.”
Despite the injustices that have happened and continue to happen to Black people in America, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has challenged Black people to get back into business and land ownership.
“Remember ‘Black Wall Street’ in Tulsa, Oklahoma: Black folk in Tulsa had it going on. Up and down the street there were Black businesses; Black people with pride and dignity in what they had produced under adverse conditions,” he said in Part 45 of his 2013 lecture series, “The Time and What Must be Done.”
“They say, ‘We have to keep these Negroes in their place!’ and so they bombed Black Wall Street. The first time a bomb was dropped in America, it was dropped on Black Wall Street! Then they cordoned it off where people could not escape out of it;
And as they tried to escape, they shot them down in cold blood, striking terror into the hearts of our men and women. So today, you’re just afraid now to challenge a system that has been put in place to keep you down,” Minister Farrakhan added.
But, he said, God promised His people, the Black man and woman of America—land.
“God doesn’t care who is on the land! If He promises land to somebody, then He has the power to serve anybody an eviction notice. If we want land, we’ve done enough to deserve it,” he said.
“What I want us to see is that the time is up for us to be ignorant and divided. And the time is in for us to pool resources to buy as much land as we can get our hands on.”