Survivors Of 1921 US Race Massacre In Powerful Plea To Congress

Three Black centenarian survivors of one of the deadliest US race massacres appealed to Congress for justice Wednesday after a lifetime of pain triggered by a tragedy only now coming to light for many Americans.

In gripping testimony, 107-year-old Viola Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre of 1921, recalled the horrors of the attack — and how she and others were left behind by a nation she accused of burying the past and moving on.

Fletcher, who dropped out of elementary school and suffered decades of poverty, said she has “lived through the massacre every day” for the past century.

The Tulsa massacre, in which up to 300 African Americans were killed when white mobs torched a Black neighborhood, remains a sensitive issue.