November 25, 2025 • KMOB1003
A life spanning 111 years cannot be summarized easily. However, the life of Viola Ford Fletcher rests on one defining word: Witness.
Mother Viola Ford Fletcher: A beacon of truth and resilience for the Black community.
On Monday, November 24, 2025, the world lost a towering figure of Black resilience and justice: Viola Ford Fletcher. She lived as one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, a deliberate assault by a white mob on the thriving community of Greenwood—also known as Black Wall Street. The attack destroyed homes, businesses, and generational wealth in a single engineered night.
Her passing represents not an ending but a renewed demand. In fact, it underscores a century-long truth: Reparations are not charity. They are the repair of a debt owed to a community that built prosperity and watched it become ash.
Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols honored her legacy, saying, “Mother Fletcher endured more than anyone should, yet she spent her life lighting a path forward with purpose.” Consequently, she worked tirelessly to ensure that the truth about Greenwood’s destruction never faded into silence or distortion.
Before the Fire: The Oasis of Greenwood
Born in 1914, Viola Ford Fletcher spent her earliest years in Greenwood, a flourishing Black district that defied segregation’s limitations. The community supported doctors, lawyers, banks, theaters, and grocery stores. Moreover, as Mother Fletcher wrote in her 2023 memoir, Don’t Let Them Bury My Story, Greenwood offered Black families dignity and opportunity during an era designed to deny both.
That oasis vanished when a white mob descended on the district. She was only seven. “I could never forget the charred remains of our once-thriving community,” she recalled. Her memories of smoke-filled skies and terrified neighbors became a lifelong imprint. Additionally, witnessing a man shot and bodies left in the streets created trauma that shaped the decades that followed.
A Childhood Marked by Survival
Her family fled in a horse-drawn buggy and rebuilt their lives as sharecroppers. As a result, her formal education ended by fourth grade. However, the limits imposed on her did not restrict her resilience or her will to thrive.
A Life Forged in Steel and Faith
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As she grew older, Mother Fletcher shaped her own path. During World War II, she worked as a welder in a Los Angeles shipyard and joined thousands of Black women stepping into essential wartime labor. Furthermore, she raised three children, held her community close, and relied on faith as an anchor. She continued working until age 85, demonstrating a level of endurance that defined every chapter of her life.
Testimony and the Fight for Repair
FILE PHOTO: Survivors and siblings Viola Fletcher and Hughes Van Ellis attend the soil dedication at Stone Hill on the 100 year anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S., May 31, 2021. REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant/File Photo
Decades later, Mother Fletcher and her younger brother, Hughes Van Ellis, stepped forward to speak publicly about the massacre. In 2021, at age 107, she testified before Congress and demanded reparations. Additionally, her testimony transformed national understanding of the massacre, shifting Greenwood from a footnote to a mandate for justice.
A 2020 lawsuit sought reparations, yet the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed the case in June 2024. Her grandson, Ike Howard, stated that everything his family owned had vanished “in one night.” Attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons added that the refusal to repair what was lost reflected not only a legal failure but a moral one.
The Legacy: A Fire Under All of Us
Mother Fletcher inspired a global movement for truth. In 2021, she traveled to Ghana, where she received the title “NaaLamiley”—one strong enough to stand the test of time. Additionally, her long life reminds us how systems of violence attempt to erase communities while expecting those same communities to remain resilient without redress.
Her attorney emphasized that she would want her story to propel action. KMOB1003 honors that mandate and affirms her demand for justice as a guiding light for future generations.
KMOB Spotlight — Mother Fletcher’s Testimony
Credit: YouTube @KMOB1003
Learn more about Black Wall Street’s legacy at the Greenwood Rising Museum •
Purchase her memoir, Don’t Let Them Bury My Story: The Oldest Living Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre In Her Own Words Hardcover •
Support the Justice for Greenwood Foundation
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KMOB1003’s Take
Mother Fletcher’s life teaches us that truth requires endurance. She did not simply outlive tragedy; she confronted a nation that often prefers amnesia over accountability. Consequently, her testimony forces us to look directly at the systems that destroyed Black prosperity not once, but repeatedly.
The country calculates interest, taxes, and penalties with precision, yet it hesitates when calculating what it owes to a community robbed in plain sight. This contradiction exposes a hard reality: the obstacle to reparations has never been complexity. It has been political will.
Her story challenges lawmakers, artists, educators, and activists to move beyond commemoration. In fact, it urges us to translate truth into policy, mourning into movement, and memory into measurable repair. We do not honor Mother Fletcher by speaking her name alone. We honor her by refusing to inherit her fight only to leave it unfinished.
Her story is instruction. The question now is whether the nation chooses to learn.
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