Viola Ford Fletcher: The Biography of Viola Ford Fletcher by University Press

Thank you University Press for providing an advanced copy of this short biography of Viola Ford Fletcher. This review expresses my own personal opinion. I have not been asked to post it by the author, University Press, or anyone connected with the book or author. 

This is a short biography of the oldest known survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Viola Ford Fletcher, who was only 7-years old, when one of the most savage atrocities in American’s history took place in 1921 when angry white mobs brutally attacked and killed scores of innocent Black citizens in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a day that should always live in infamy. 

Mrs. Fletcher, also known as Mother Fletcher, born in 1914 is now 109. Her brother, Hughes Van Ellis, the second oldest survivor, a newborn during the massacre, recently died at the age of 102. Mrs. Fletcher, in my opinion, is nothing short of an American hero and icon. This short book chronicles her long life and vividly shares with us what she endured during that most dark night. 

The book makes it crystal clear, this was an unprovoked attack by racist white men and women who got ginned up by the white-owned Tulsa Tribune reporting an unsubstantiated accusation by a 17-year white girl, Sarah Page, working as an elevator operator, that she had be assaulted by 19-year-old Black shoeshine man, Dick Rowland. While the facts are sketchy, he may have merely tripped while getting into the elevator, reached out to brace himself and accidentally touched her arm or another account, that he accidentally stepped on her foot. Whatever the reason, the fact he would even touch a white woman in those days was a reason to be lynched. Rowland was arrested the next day and with the Tribune still ginning things up, angry white mobs began to form, demanding that Rowland be turned over to them for justice, which we all know what that would have been, lynching.  Hearing the news of Rowland’s arrest and the demand by the white mobs to get him, armed Black men showed up to offer assistance to the white sheriff who repeatedly rebuffed their offers. Soon things spiraled out of control with the white mobs launching an assault on what was then called The Black Wall Street, Greenwood/Tulsa, killing and bombing indiscriminately, decimating the town. 

An experience like living through a massacre can destroy you, if you let it. In her 2021 testimony to Congress about reparations, she stated, "I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our home,” she said, “I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams." Could you erase something like this from your memory, from your psyche? You cannot. The book pointedly asks, how could no one have ever been held accountable for the Tulsa race massacre? How was it possible that a mob of violent, crazed, racist people was given a bunch of deadly weapons and allowed - no, encouraged - to go out and kill innocent Black folks and demolish a whole community? How was it possible that she and her family and thousands of others had lost so much, and yet those who had taken everything from her had lost nothing at all?

These are questions that still haunt the city of Tulsa, the state of Oklahoma, and our nation. 

The author does a good job of showing you Fletcher’s hard and yet, rewarding life, from the massacre to today at 109. How she has and continues to be an outspoken critic against those who wish to bury the past, to tell her story and the stories of those who died and suffered at the hands of racists. Championing peace and love. She has traveled internationally (in 2021 she and her brother visited Ghana, where she was crowned a queen mother), testified before Congress, advocating and pushing for a lawsuit for reparations, and written a book, Don’t Let Them Bury My Story, all in an effort to share with the world what hatred can do and to never let what happened be forgotten or happen again. 

I applaud University Press for publishing this good piece on Mother Fletcher. It was well written, easy to understand, and very timely in the tumultuous times we live in. And like Mother Fletcher, we can never cease to stand for what is right, to fight against racism in all its forms.