Tulsa Race Massacre survivor turns 110

Lessie Benningfield Randle, known as “Mother Randle,” is one of the last two known living survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and on Sunday, she celebrated her 110th birthday during a commemoration event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she was surrounded by family, friends and members of the community.
Randle, who has spoken out against censoring Black history in education, was born in 1914. She was a young girl when she survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, a deadly attack by a white mob on Tulsa’s Greenwood section, a thriving Black neighborhood known as “Black Wall Street.”
“Mother Randle has done a tremendous job of opening the country’s eyes to the horrors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, its enduring impact, and the need for accountability and restitution. And she’s made it clear that she’s not done yet,” Damario Solomon-Simmons, lead attorney for the survivors and founder of Justice for Greenwood, told ABC News in a statement on Sunday. “At 110 years old, Mother Randle is still challenging America to live up to its purported values, which is the true measure of a patriot. She is not only living history — she is a source of inspiration and one of the strongest people I know.”
Viola Fletcher, known as “Mother Fletcher,” who is also 110 years old, is the only other known remaining survivor of the massacre after Hugh Van Ellis, known as “Uncle Red,” died Oct. 9, 2023 at 102, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Fletcher was also present at Randle’s celebration on Sunday.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Randle’s grandson Antonio Randle told ABC Tulsa affiliate KTUL.
“This is once in a lifetime type of deal, and to have two of them still here at 110 is incredible.”
Randle’s and Fletcher’s family members met for the first time last month with detectives from the DOJ’s cold case unit, after the department announced Sept. 30 the first-ever federal review of the Tulsa Race Massacre, an attack that Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke referred to as “one of the deadliest episodes of mass racial violence in this nation’s history.”
“I’ve been hearing about it my entire life,” Randle’s grandson told KTUL, referring to the Tulsa Race Massacre.
“To see it all unfolding … words can’t express, you know, some of the gratification that you have,” he added, reflecting on the DOJ inquiry. “It’s just a wonderful time, man, in American history.”
Solomon-Simmons welcomed the inquiry last month and said that survivors and their descendants want a “full investigation.”
“Everyone wants actual accountability of the massacre. They want those who perpetrated this harm that started in 1921 and continues to today, to be held accountable,” he told ABC News.
In announcing the federal review of the Tulsa massacre, Clarke referenced the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, a federal law passed in 2008 that authorized the government to reopen civil rights crimes resulting in death that occurred on or before Dec. 31, 1979.
She said the “catalyst” for the massacre in Tulsa mirrored the Till murder, because it was sparked by the claim that a Black youth inappropriately engaged with a white woman.
Clarke said that while the DOJ has “no expectation that there are living perpetrators who could be criminally prosecuted by us or by the state,” the department’s review acknowledges that the “descendants of the survivors, and the victims, continue to bear the trauma of this act of racial terrorism.”
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.