GREENWOOD Dist. — Over a century after surviving a government-sanctioned ethnic cleansing of her community, 110-year-old “Mother” Viola Ford Fletcher, the oldest living 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre survivor, casted her vote for Kamala Harris for President.
Mother Fletcher placed her vote for the potentially first woman president inside the Tulsa Tech North Peoria campus, just four miles north of where her legs once carried her away from the burning flames and fiery hatred of racist violence.
“Well, I think they’re capable of being the president. They’ve helped do so much,” Mother Fletcher told The Black Wall Street Times when asked how it feels to vote for a woman for president.
Mother Fletcher, the granddaughter of enslaved people, made her impact on democracy by voting for the potentially first Black and South Asian woman president of the United States, with the assistance of her grandson.
From surviving a racist mob to voting for Kamala Harris
When Fletcher was just a little girl on May 31, 1921, she fled from an angry white mob numbering in the thousands that was deputized by city officials. Outraged over their failure to lynch a Black teenager, the mob went street-by-street burning, bombing, looting and shooting to death upwards of 300 Black men, women and children in Tulsa’s Greenwood District, according to the Oklahoma and Tulsa Historical Society.
Home to the original community dubbed Black Wall Street, the mob destroyed over 200 businesses and over 1,200 homes. Over 103 years later, Mother Fletcher voted for a president candidate who has vowed to expand access to homeownership and entrepreneurship in Black communities.
“I think it’s very important that we all should vote. Votes are counted. So, I’d like for mine to be one,” Mother Fletcher told The Black Wall Street Times.
She’d previously met the Vice President at the White House, when VP Harris held a meeting to support her and other survivors.
“I think it’s wonderful. I didn’t know all of this might happen, but good things do happen to people when we stay here that long,” Fletcher laughed.
Days earlier 109-year-old Mother Lessie Benningfield Randle, the only other known living Tulsa Race Massacre survivor, cast an absentee ballot for Harris.
“I don’t know how much longer I have left, but if this is my last ballot, then I’m grateful that it’s for Kamala Harris,” Ms. Randle said in a statement.
Survivor chooses Kamala Harris, rejects Trump
Voters face a stark choice between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor and U.S. Senator, or twice-impeached former President Donald Trump, an embattled business with an ego as long as his 34-felony-count conviction and ongoing criminal charges.
Harris has focused her campaign on proposals to offer financial support to new home buyers and entrepreneurs. She’s vowed to support protections for women’s’ bodily autonomy and respect for the U.S. Constitution.
“On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list, full of priorities of what I will get done for the American people,” Harris said at a speech in D.C. last week, the same location where Trump incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Meanwhile, Trump has proposed a more fierce continuation of his anti-immigrant polices. He also continues to flirt with fascism, labeling his political opponents as enemies of the people and threatening to suspend the Constitution.
His policy proposals have been overshadowed by his increasingly violent rhetoric.
“I have a piece of glass here…But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much. I don’t mind that,” Trump said Sunday at a rally in Pennsylvania.
For 110-year-old survivor Mother Fletcher, the vote for Kamala Harris was a clear choice.
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