Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors Recall Century-Old Horrors During Congressional Hearing

"I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street," said 107-year-old Viola Fletcher, who testified along with two other survivors of t...

Centenarians who survived the 1921 destruction of a thriving Black district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, told members of Congress at a hearing on Wednesday that they are still waiting for justice. “By the grace of God, I am still here. I have survived. I have survived to tell this story,” Lessie Benningfield Randle, 106, said in front of the House Judiciary’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee. “Hopefully now you all will listen to us while we are still here.” The hearing was timed to align with the centennial of what’s known as the Tulsa race massacre, in which a white mob leveled a Black community called Greenwood in May 1921, razing businesses, killing an estimated 300 Black people and leaving another 10,000 homeless.