Viola Fletcher, the oldest known survivor of the Tulsa race massacre, has died at the age of 111, city officials announced Tuesday.
Fletcher was a young child in 1921 when white mobs destroyed her Black neighborhood of Greenwood, Oklahoma—once a thriving community famously known as Black Wall Street.
Historians estimate that up to 300 African American residents were killed during the attack, one of the deadliest episodes of racist violence in U.S. history.
“Today, our city mourns the loss of Mother Viola Fletcher—a survivor of one of the darkest chapters in our city’s history,” Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols said in a statement.
He added: “Fletcher carried 111 years of truth, resilience, and grace, and was a reminder of both how far we’ve come and how far we still must go.”
The massacre began on May 31, 1921, after a group of Black men went to the local courthouse to defend a young African American accused of assaulting a white woman. They were confronted by a furious white mob and retreated to Greenwood, only to have the neighborhood looted and torched at dawn the following day.
Greenwood, once one of America’s most successful Black enclaves, was burned to the ground, with homes and businesses destroyed and thousands left homeless.
Fletcher, who dropped out of elementary school and endured decades of poverty while working primarily as a housekeeper for white families, later reflected on her life: she said she had “lived through the massacre every day” for the past century, carrying the memories of that tragedy throughout her life.
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