We’re Not Angry Enough
The Oldest Survivor of the Tulsa Massacre just died. How many generations of Black Americans will pass on more trauma & loss than joy & restitution? When will we insist on something more?
Viola Fletcher was born into a big family of Black, Baptist sharecroppers who looked to Tulsa as a chance to dream bigger for themselves. Her parents purchased a home in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa to jumpstart that dream. Little Viola was only seven when that dream became a nightmare. In 1921, Viola and her siblings were abruptly awoken by their mother who frantically gathered her family to flee for their lives. Amidst fire, bullets, and rage, the Fletchers ran for their lives as white Oklahomans burned their beloved Black community to the ground. That night changed everything for Viola who lost her home and sense of security in the blink of an eye.
Surprisingly, the Fletcher family lived to see another day and Viola herself would grow to be 111 years old. For the next 100+ years since, Viola would have nightmares and be unable to sleep with the lights off. The terror of that night was violent enough but Viola couldn’t have imagined that the massacre she barely survived would go on to be documented through research papers, monuments, and museums yet nothing would be done for survivors like her and her brother who was only a newborn baby at the time.
I’m mad as hell.
Can you imagine living to be over 100 years old and be paraded in and out of courtrooms reliving the worst night of your life for nothing? “I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our house,” she testified. “I still see Black men being shot, and 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. I live through the Massacre every day.” To watch documentaries made and students taught about that night but have judges and elected officials claim there was nothing they could do to make any amends or restitution? To be forced to crowdsource for a home on GoFundMe because there seemed to be no other path towards dying with dignity and the ability to pass on something beautiful to your children and grandchildren?
I’m mad as hell.
Viola, most recently known as “Mother Fletchers” passed away this week and became yet another Black American to die only knowing disappointment, rage, and exhaustion. To join the ranks of generations of Black Americans who had everything taken from them and nothing returned. No amount of “rest in power” platitudes can make up for the fact that this country failed her over and over. First when they allowed white vigilantes and government officials to commit those heinous crimes & again when we turned a blind eye to what it cost her.
Mother Fletcher deserved reparations. She deserved to hear the words “I’m sorry” and to receive land and other compensation to replace the stolen inheritance she didn’t get to receive from her parents or pass on to her descendants. She deserved so much more than what this country spat out at her and I’m enraged that she didn’t live to see her advocacy materialize as more than a cautionary tale.
I’m mad as hell. Aren’t you? I don’t want to grow old and Black in a country that treats our elders this way. I don’t want to raise Black children in a country that treats our people this way. I’m balling up my fists to a country that claims to be the richest but doesn’t have a dime to spare for Mother Fletcher and every other survivor of white supremacist violence. A country that is so fixated on exporting democracy around the world but can’t tell the truth or make amends right here on our own soil.
I’m mad as hell and I don’t know what to do with all this anger except to keep writing, keep honoring the rage, and keep demanding more. Maybe more of us will get angry enough to actually disrupt this cycle. I hope so.
Please be mad with me. Don’t tell me — or yourself — that “it’s okay.” Be consumed by what is unjust until we flip the whole broken system on its ugly head. Until there’s nothing to be angry about. Please.
