Kamala Harris receives powerful statement of support from Tulsa Race Massacre survivors

Tulsa, Oklahoma - Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has received a powerful endorsement for president from the last two living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Tulsa Race Massacre survivors Viola Ford Fletcher (c.) and Lessie Benningfield Randle (r.) have announced their support for Kamala Harris' presidential run.
Tulsa Race Massacre survivors Viola Ford Fletcher (c.) and Lessie Benningfield Randle (r.) have announced their support for Kamala Harris' presidential run.  © IMAGO / USA TODAY Network

"As the last living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, centenarian civil rights activists, and proud Black women, it is with great pride and affection that we offer our full support to Vice President Kamala Harris as she seeks the Democratic nomination for President of the United States of America," Viola Ford Fletcher (110) and Lessie Benningfield Randle (109) shared in a statement.

"We were born into a country that elected Woodrow Wilson, a president who screened the racist film The Birth of a Nation in the White House; but by the grace of God, we have lived long enough to see Barack Obama become this nation’s first Black president," the survivors said.

"Now, Vice President Harris is well-positioned to ascend to the highest echelons of power in this country. As little Black girls in segregated, then-decimated North Tulsa, we never could have dreamed that this day would come, or that we would live to see it."

Tulsa Race Massacre survivors' fight for justice

Fletcher and Randle were children when they were forced to flee Tulsa during the infamous 1921 race massacre, which saw white law enforcement officers and deputized civilians murder hundreds of Black Tulsans and raze 40 square-blocks of the city's once-flourishing Greenwood District, known as Black Wall Street. Attackers even dropped firebombs on Greenwood from decommissioned US military planes.

After the massacre, authorities immediately sought to cover up the crimes by destroying police records and burying bodies in unmarked mass graves.

Throughout their long lives, the two survivors have been plagued by memories of the racist attack – driving their decades-long fight for justice and repair.

Calls for federal action

Vice President and 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris attends a presidential campaign event at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus.
Vice President and 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris attends a presidential campaign event at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus.  © REUTERS

Fletcher and Randle's statement in support of Harris came two months after the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed their historic lawsuit seeking reparations for the crimes they endured as children and in the years since.

Earlier this month, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum – who opposed the survivors' legal quest for redress – announced the creation of a Beyond Apology Commission to develop a reparations plan for the city.

As the 2024 election approaches, Fletcher and Randle have expressed gratitude to Harris for meeting and praying with them in 2021, 100 years after the massacre.

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Since that time, they have urged President Joe Biden and the Justice Department to launch a probe into the massacre under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007 – a step the administration has not yet taken.

"We ask that the Vice President continue to see us – two elderly Black women living on borrowed time," the survivors said in their statement. "We will continue to seek justice for the wrongs wrought by the Massacre and we will tell the story of the Massacre until our last breaths."

"And should Vice President Harris become President Harris, we ask that she do whatever is within her power to obtain justice for Tulsa and for all of the souls that did not live to see the history we pray she makes."

Cover photo: Collage: REUTERS & IMAGO / USA TODAY Network

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