Despite current attempts by some elected officials to ban or water down Black history, storytellers still live on. The oldest living Tulsa Massacre survivor is now releasing a new memoir.
The Tulsa Massacre occurred on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was a targeted attack aiming to demolish the thriving Black community of Greenwood, known as “Black Wall Street” due to its economic prosperity. The massacre was sparked by a false accusation against a Black man and escalated when a white mob destroyed the town by looting, burning homes and businesses, and attacking residents. The incident resulted in the deaths of about 300 Black people, with thousands left homeless. There have been attempts to erase the event but survivor, Viola Ford Fletcher, is determined to not let that happen.
Viola Ford Fletcher’s Tulsa Story
Fletcher has worked tirelessly throughout her lifetime to fight for the rights of those who lost their homes and families in the Tulsa Massacre. According to the Associated Press, she has traveled internationally, testified before Congress, and supported a lawsuit for reparations. Her new memoir, “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story,” will be published by Mocha Media Inc. and will release on August 15. She hopes to share the story of that day from her point of view.
“The questions I had then remain to this day,” Fletcher wrote in the book. “How could you just give a mob of violent, crazed, racist people a bunch of deadly weapons and allow them — no, encourage them — to go out and kill innocent Black folks and demolish a whole community?”
Co-author of the memoir and Fletcher’s grandson, Ike Howard, said that Tulsa’s Black community still hasn’t fully recovered. He blames it on systemic racism.
“They want to be made whole,” Howard said. “We speak for everybody that went through a similar situation, who are not here to tell their stories.”
“You can learn a lot from ‘Don’t Let Them Bury My Story.’ And we know that history can repeat itself if you don’t correct and reconcile issues,” he added.