Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis and family in Ghana/Photo courtesy of Black Wall Street Times
Viola Fletcher and Hughes Van Ellis are finally experiencing their dream trip to Africa. The Tulsa Race Massacre survivors have traveled to Ghana for a week-long stay.
The Tulsa Race Massacre is a legendary chapter of Black history and white terrorism in this country. At least 300 Black lives were lost, and Oklahoma officials are just now beginning to take those losses seriously. However, Fletcher and her brother, Van Ellis, managed to survive the massacre when they were children.
On Sunday, Fletcher, 107, and her brother Ellis, 100, and their grandchildren, arrived in Ghana to be their excursion, reported AfricaNews. The trip is a part of the local government’s campaign to get members of the diaspora to come “home” and was coordinated by Our Black Truth, a social media platform. Who would be better suited to make this journey than victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre?
The Deputy Director of the Diaspora Office of the President Nadia Adongo Musah was thrilled that Viola Fletcher and Hughes Van Ellis desired to visit the continent and recognized the kinship of Africans in the states to continental Africans.
“I think this one of the biggest historic African diasporans that have come back to us. When the president made the announcement on Beyond the Return, 2018 in DC and celebrating the Beyond the Return in 2019, we never thought that one of our siblings who was taken away generation from that, 107 years old and have the passion and interest to visit Ghana,” Musah said of Fletcher and Ellis’ visit.
For Fletcher, the trip was just as memorable.
“I had everything a child could need… But within a few horrible hours, all of that was gone. Now, after all these years, I’m so happy to be fulfilling a lifelong dream of going to Africa, and I am so pleased that is too beautiful Ghana,” Fletcher said.
Being survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the most harrowing documented postbellum attacks against Black Americans in history, is in itself remarkable. The opportunity to visit West Africa, where many Black American families began, is cathartic.
On Sunday, the family will attend a church service and receive symbolic titles during traditional ceremonies.