Isabel Wilkerson Instagram – She held out for over a century yet still did not live to see justice. Viola Ford Fletcher was, at age 111, the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 — one of the worst such attacks in the country’s history. Her passing yesterday is not just the loss of a persevering woman but a symbol of the dashed hopes for atonement for an entire people.
She was seven when her family was forced to flee a white mob that attacked the black section of Tulsa, shooting residents on the ground, bombing from above and leveling what had once been known as “Black Wall Street.” The massacre left hundreds dead and the black district in cinders.
“I still smell smoke and see fire,” she said in her testimony before Congress in 2021 at 107 years old. “I still see black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre everyday.”
Her family escaped with nothing but the clothes they had on. She would grow up to marry and become part of the Great Migration to California, finding work in the shipyards.
She spent her final years bearing witness to the history she had lived. She and the handful of aged survivors filed suit in 2020 against the city and the state, seeking official acknowledgement and reparations. But three years later, a Tulsa County District Judge dismissed the case.
It was a blow beyond one person. As long as Viola Fletcher was alive, there was hope that the country would do right by her as one of the last survivors of a tragic chapter in American history. It would have been tangible recognition of the injustices against the black citizens of Tulsa and, by extension, the millions of others who survived enslavement and Jim Crow.
The country has a history of running down the clock, so that the incontrovertible case for recompense for those who were wronged no longer applies. At times, there may be acknowledgment after the fact that reparations might have once been warranted; but, alas, it’s too late because those who suffered directly are no longer living. Which is exactly how justice delayed becomes justice denied.
Yet, she bore witness so that none of us would ever forget. | Posted on 26/Nov/2025 03:54:22
