Rest In Peace and Power, Mrs. Viola Ford Fletcher
by Chitown Kev
Yesterday, it was announced that the oldest living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Viola Ford Fletcher, passed away. She was 111 years old.
Allow me to simmer on that for a minute. 111 YEARS OLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Candace Norwood/The 19th News
On the night of May 31, 1921, 7-year-old Fletcher was asleep in bed as the city around her began to burn.
An angry mob of White residents had descended on the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, burning and looting homes and businesses in the thriving majority-Black neighborhood, known as “Black Wall Street.” The mob’s rageful attack had been fueled by racism and false allegations that a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner, Dick Rowland, had raped a 17-year-old White elevator operator, Sarah Page. Page declined to press charges and denied that an assault occurred.
Over two days, the raging White residents destroyed 35 city blocks. Some 300 people died, more than 800 were hospitalized and about 6,000 Black residents were detained in internment camps.
“You know, I can still smell the smoke … the burning,” Fletcher told The 19th’s reporting fellow Katherine Gilyard in 2023. “I remember the bodies. All the Black bodies in the street. The sound of the guns … they didn’t stop — I can still hear them.”
Fletcher’s family fled and were forced to live a nomadic life for years as seasonal sharecroppers. Fletcher eventually married, moved to California and worked as an assistant welder in the shipyards during World War II before working as a house cleaner until age 85.
As the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre has become better known during this decade, Mom has asked me (because I’ve always been a history buff, I guess) when I found out about the Tulsa Race Massacre.
I was aware of it as a teenager (around the same time that I learned of the Juneteenth holiday); I distinctly remember reading about the event but I did none of the usual follow-up that a historian (even an aspiring and amateur one) should do.
For the most part, I learned many of the details of the Tulsa Race Massacre along with everyone else during this decade.
More on the life of Viola Ford Fletcher from The New York Times’ Alex Traub.
Viola Ford was born on May 5, 1914, in rural Comanche County, Okla. Her parents, Lucinda and John Wesley Ford, were sharecroppers who divorced not long after her birth. Her mother married Henry Ellis, and the couple, along with Lucinda’s children, moved to Greenwood, where Mr. Ellis built the family a home.
The family’s flight from the massacre concluded 30 miles northeast of Tulsa in a wooded area called Claremore, where they found safety, living in a tent. The women went to the bathroom in the woods, three at a time for safety. The family used sticks, string and rocks to catch rabbits for food. They trapped lightning bugs in a jar for a light at night.
Viola never received more than an elementary school education. Instead, she worked alongside her relatives as a sharecropper, picking cotton and tending to livestock for $1 a day.
In 2021, Mrs. Fletcher, along with other two other living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, gave testimony to what they experienced 100 years before.
I have nothing more to add...other than this reminder from Candace Norwood’s story.
...about 6,000 Black residents were detained in internment camps.
For those Black Americans who assume that internment camps are a thing of the past that only happens to those that arrived in America from (presumably!) other countries, just...don’t assume that. It happened to us before and can happen again.
We need to remember our history now more than ever, in spite of and because of the attempts to erase it.
x
As a survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Viola Ford Fletcher bravely shared her story so that we’d never forget this painful part of our history. Michelle and I are grateful for her lifelong work to advance civil rights, and send our love to her family.
— Barack Obama (@barackobama.bsky.social) 2025-11-25T00:45:23.371Z
Rest In Peace and Power, Viola Ford Fletcher, and thank you for all that you did to make history present!
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The Trump administration is making it significantly harder for graduate students across the country to fund their education and is jeopardizing their future careers by classifying some degrees as “non-professional.” Here is what you need to know about these changes.
Education Secretary Linda McHanon, former CEO of the WWE, is implementing caps on student loans for degrees now deemed “non-professional,” as part of President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill Act,” according to The Independent.
Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill Act” aims to cut federal spending, including on food benefits and Medicaid, while increasing spending on border and defense initiatives, the BBC reports.
These cuts include reductions to education funds, which will disproportionately affect Black graduate students. The Education Data Initiative notes that 66% of Black graduate students rely on student loans, compared with 47.4% of white graduate students.
Denying graduate nursing programs “professional degree” status would exacerbate financial hurdles and systemic barriers for Black nurses, hindering their career advancement and worsening their underrepresentation in leadership, faculty, and the overall nursing profession.
“Professional degree” students, such as law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and chiropractic students, can borrow up to $50,000 per year and $200,000 over the course of their degree. Students who are not on a “professional degree” course, like physician assistants, physical therapists and nurses, can only borrow $20,500 per year and $100,000 overall, according to USA Today.
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Solange Knowles is taking her Saint Heron Library to the next level. According to the New York Times, the Grammy-winning artist and USC scholar-in-residence recently released Azurest Blue, a 69-page zine chronicling the life and work of Amaza Lee Meredith, one of the country’s first Black female and queer architects.
The release marks a major expansion of the Saint Heron Library, which has grown from a collection of 50 rare and out-of-print titles to more than 2,150 books now circulating across the U.S. Borrowers can request the materials through an honor-based system, with complimentary shipping and a 45-day return period. Saint Heron reports a 99% return rate, even for its most in-demand works.
The Meredith zine includes archival photos, commissioned essays, and research materials, with a personalized library checkout slip tucked inside each copy, a nod to childhood library experiences. Fans have formed block-long lines at Manhattan pop-up events to borrow copies, with similar events planned for Detroit, Los Angeles, and Virginia State University through December.
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Gunmen have kidnapped more than 300 students and teachers in one of the largest mass kidnappings in Nigeria, a Christian group said on Saturday, as security fears mounted in Africa’s most populous nation.
The early Friday raid on St Mary’s co-educational school in Niger state in western Nigeria came after gunmen on Monday stormed a secondary school in neighboring Kebbi state, abducting 25 girls.
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) had earlier reported 227 people seized, but the new number came “after a verification exercise” that concluded 303 students and 12 teachers were abducted.
The number of boys and girls – aged between eight and 18 years – kidnapped from St Mary’s is almost half the school’s student population of 629.
The Nigerian government has not commented on the number of students and teachers abducted.
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