Amid Juneteenth celebrations, 109-year-old Tulsa race riot survivor tells News of 1921 massacre that claimed hundreds of Black lives

For years, she wouldn’t admit it. For years after that, she wouldn’t even discuss it.

Even thinking about what happened to her family and community felt like a crime punishable by more death and destruction.

Over time, Viola Ford Fletcher began to tell her story. How much time? Fletcher is 109 years old, and next month — on Independence Day — Fletcher is releasing a new book chronicling one of the ugliest moments in American history.

Fletcher was 7 years old in 1921 when a deadly and shameful race riot broke out in Tulsa, Okla., a heinous act of violence that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Black people over the span of 18 hours.

“I saw and heard people screaming and running and falling, houses burning, guns shooting,” Fletcher said during a Midtown interview with the Daily News. “And the rushing of Black people out of town before most of us was killed.”

Fletcher and her little brother, Hughes Van Ellis, were at home with their family on May 30, 1921, when Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old shoe shiner, was accused of trying to sexually assault a white Tulsa elevator operator named Sarah Page, 17, after she screamed and he ran, according to Greenwood’s Cultural Center.

Greenwood was a thriving community in Tulsa, known as “Black Wall Street” in the years after World War I, recognized nationally as the richest African-American neighborhood in the country.

With a thriving business district and a residential area filled with influential black leaders, the Greenwood District was an inspiring model of America’s promise. It was here that Count Basie first encountered big band jazz.

It was against that backdrop that an angry white mob went to the courthouse to demand that the sheriff hand over Rowland, the shoe shiner. The sheriff refused. A group of about 25 armed Black men — including many World War I veterans — then went to the courthouse to offer help guarding Rowland.

Outraged whites went home to get their guns, and amid the outbreak, attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood.

“The white citizens were taking the Molotov cocktails and throwing them into the buildings,” said Fletcher’s grandson, Ike Howard, 56, who co-authored the new book with Fletcher, “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story: The Oldest Living Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre in Her Own Words.”

“They threw bodies in the river, kids in the river. Dead bodies thrown in the river so they wouldn’t have to bury them.”

By the time the National Guard arrived and declared martial law shortly before the next day, the riot had effectively ended. Within hours, all charges against Rowland were dropped. Cops concluded that he might have bumped into the woman or stepped on her foot.

What followed was a deliberate effort to cover up the carnage.

The Tulsa Tribune removed the front-page story from its bound volumes, and scholars later discovered that police and state militia archives about the riot were missing as well. As a result, until recently the Tulsa Race Massacre was rarely mentioned in history books, taught in schools or even discussed.

“My grandmother said that the ashes were coming from the sky like snow, and the tears were black. You couldn’t see, and [there was] coughing and hacking,” Howard said.

Among those who endured the trauma were Fletcher’s infant brother, Hughes Van Ellis, who is 102 years old now, and wrote the book’s foreword. The family calls him Uncle Red.

“When my grandmother and the rest of her family were escaping that night, she saw some horrendous things, and because of that she can’t sleep at night,” said Howard, who lives in Dallas. “Uncle Red is the same way, even though he was a baby.”

Over time, Fletcher moved away from Tulsa, but eventually made it back. In between, she had three children, seven grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren.

Fletcher sat draped in a plaid shawl as she and Howard recounted the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the Great Depression and the polio outbreak. The book also covers Fletcher’s time as a Rosie the Riveter during World War II, working at a shipyard in Los Angeles, building the boats her brother sailed in during his time in the Navy.

Howard did most of the talking, which seemed like a fair arrangement since Fletcher had done much of the living.

“They can’t enjoy a normal barbecue because when they see or smell smoke they have a physical and mental reaction,” Howard said of his grandmother and uncle.

Howard said the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill even brought some of the memories back, and almost caused her to abandon the book project.

“That angry mob reminded her of that angry mob, when they attacked the Capitol,” Howard said. “That reinforced that fear.”

But Fletcher got back on track.

“It was hard to even get her to talk about the story because many people are not aware that they had a concentration-like camp, and so everybody that didn’t escape and everybody they didn’t kill was put in a makeshift prison. They told everybody, ‘If you talk about this we will kill you and your entire family.’

“When you can put shackles on a person’s mind, that’s very powerful, and that’s why the story was kept under wraps for so long,” Howard said. “For a long time she would not even discuss it. She wouldn’t even admit it.”

Now, Fletcher recognizes the Tulsa massacre as an important part of America’s history, as important as Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the end of slavery, which America will commemorate on Monday.

In Tulsa, residents are marking the day with art, performances, a 5K run and a Black Wall Street pitch competition, in which entrepreneurs present business ideas and compete for cash prizes.

In 1996, an official state government commission was created to investigate the Tulsa Race Riot, including numerous victims buried in unmarked graves.

According to the State Department of Education, the riot has been a required topic in Oklahoma history classes since 2000, and U.S. history classes since 2004. The incident has been included in Oklahoma history books since 2009.

“She’s seen the worst of America and some of the best of America,” Howard said. “We want to let people know you’re never too old to tell your story.”