A century later, city still struggles with slaughter

Haunted survivors, descendants seek justice for rampage known as the Tulsa Race Massacre, which destroyed a prominent black community in Oklahoma in 1921

"On May 30, 1921, I went to bed in my family's home in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa. I felt my sleep that night was rich, not just in terms of wealth but in culture, community and heritage," Viola Fletcher, 107, told members of a congressional subcommittee on Capitol Hill in May. "My family had a beautiful home, we had great neighbors and I had friends to play with. … Then a few hours (later), all of that was gone."

Still being able to "smell smoke and see fire", Fletcher, who has lived long enough to be called "Mother Fletcher" by all who come into her audience, had traveled all the way from her home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Washington DC, so that her story could be heard, and the century-old damages done to herself and her people be mended in the slightest possible way.

In bristling detail, Fletcher recounted the killing of her people and the burning of her community by a large white mob on May 31 and June 1 of 1921, as seen through the eyes of a 7-year-old.

Known today as the Tulsa Race Massacre and arguably the most horrendous incident of racial violence against black people that has taken place on US soil in the past century, the event led to the destruction of a 35-square-block neighborhood known as the Greenwood District in North Tulsa. In the aftermath, more than 10,000 black Tulsans were left injured, homeless and destitute. The number of deaths is estimated to be as many as 300, the victims' burial grounds largely remaining unknown.

"I am 107 years old and have never seen justice," Fletcher told her listeners on May 19, referring to the fact that no members of the mob had ever been held accountable and none of the victims compensated by any level of the US government.

She was joined by her 100-year-old brother Hughes Van Ellis and through videoconference by their fellow black Tulsan, 106-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle. All have spent their lives in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, part of the American heartland.

The prosperous community was once hailed nationwide as the "Black Wall Street". Yet according to Hannibal Johnson, attorney and author of the 2020 book Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples With Its Historical Racial Trauma, the designation is "a misnomer" due largely to the absence of banking and investment enterprises, and the community itself "one of necessity", given birth by state-sanctioned segregation.

In November 1907, Oklahoma, right upon its admission as a state, installed racial segregation laws as its first order of business. Commonly known as Jim Crow laws, they mainly targeted black as well as other people of color with active measures to disenfranchise them and undo their political and economic gains.

Nine years later in 1916, Tulsa City mandated residential segregation by forbidding black or white people from residing on any block where three-fourths of more of the residents were members of the other race.