Viola Ford Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dead at 111

Viola Ford Fletcher, the oldest survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, died at the age of 111 on Monday, in a hospital surrounded by her family, according to her grandson.

“Mother Fletcher endured more than anyone should, yet she spent her life lighting a path forward with purpose,” said Mayor Monroe Nichols, the first Black leader of Oklahoma’s second-largest city, after Fletcher’s passing.

She was only 7 years old when a white mob stormed Tulsa’s prosperous, largely black Greenwood district on May 31, 1921, after a local newspaper published a sensationalized report about a black man accused of assaulting a white woman.

The inflammatory report sparked a confrontation between black Tulsans and a white mob outside a courthouse. Shots were fired, and white residents responded with