A grassroots campaign launched Thursday hopes to secure $1 million to go toward a home for one of the remaining two 1921 Race Massacre survivors.
Dubbed “A Home to Inherit,” its goal is to raise cash to either purchase or build a permanent home for 111-year-old Viola Ford Fletcher. Fletcher survived the Race Massacre in Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood when she was a child over a century ago.
Deon Osborne, editor of The Black Wall Street Times and a campaign organizer, said Fletcher wants a home to pass down to her family members.
“It’s not just the home, but it’s what the home represents,” Osborne said. “The ability for her to grow her own food. The ability for her to have her family coming through. She really wants her family to be okay.”
Andrew Sartain, the other campaign organizer, said the “hefty” campaign goal would pay for elder care for Fletcher in addition to the home itself.
“Whether it’s the caretakers on-site, people to help with errands,” Sartain said. “We’re wanting to make sure this isn’t something that we get and then they’re looking for the money for only a couple months at a time to take care of her.”
Fletcher currently lives in a senior care facility along with fellow survivor Lessie Benningfield Randle.
Osborne said the inspiration for their campaign came after Tulsa’s "Road to Repair" plan was unveiled by Mayor Monroe Nichols in June. Though historic, the city’s plan does not include direct reparations for the two massacre survivors.
Survivors have received payments from other sources.
Osborne emphasized the push for a home for Fletcher as a “gift.”
“This is not reparations,” he said. “Reparations involve the party that perpetrated the harm rectifying it.”
Sartain noted that, with Fletcher at 111-years-old, “time is a big priority” to raise the funds.
