At 112, Mother Randle Is Greenwood's Last Witness: Why Congress Must Pass H.R. 4228 Now

By HistorianSpeaks

On Tuesday, November 10, 2026, Lessie Benningfield Randle turned 112 in Tulsa. Greenwood calls her Mother Randle. She was six years old when a white mob burned her neighborhood to the ground on May 31 and June 1, 1921. Today she is the last known living survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and she has never received a dollar from any government for what was taken from her.

Her two fellow survivors are gone. Hughes Van Ellis, known as Uncle Redd, died in October 2023 at 102. His sister, Viola Ford Fletcher, known as Mother Fletcher, died on November 24, 2025, at 111. Both died waiting. A bill now sitting in the House of Representatives, H.R. 4228, would finally pay the debt to the one survivor who remains. Whether Congress acts before this session ends is the question this weekend's action alert puts to every reader.

For the full documentary record of the massacre, from B. C. Franklin's eyewitness account to the 2025 Justice Department report, read our source explainer, [Fire on the Land: What the Sources Say About the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921](/blog/fire-on-the-land-tulsa-race-massacre-sources-explainer).

Eighteen Hours That Erased a District

Greenwood in 1921 was one of the most prosperous Black communities in the United States, a district of churches, hotels, groceries, newspapers, doctors' offices and a movie theater that people called Black Wall Street. The violence began after a false accusation against Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner, and a newspaper story that urged white Tulsans toward the courthouse. When armed Black veterans and residents came to stop a lynching, the white mob, many of its members deputized and armed by city officials, crossed into Greenwood.

By the next afternoon about 35 square blocks lay in ruins. Historians estimate that as many as 300 people were killed. More than 1,200 homes were burned, and roughly 10,000 Black Tulsans were left homeless. Many survivors spent the following winter in tents. Instead of protecting them, the National Guard and local authorities rounded up thousands of Black residents and held them in internment camps.

"White men with guns came and destroyed my community," Mother Randle told members of Congress in 2021. "We couldn't understand why. What did we do to them?"

Lawyers in a Tent

Greenwood's demand for repair is as old as the ashes. Days after the fire, attorney Buck Colbert Franklin, the father of historian John Hope Franklin, set up a law office in a tent with his partner I. H. Spears and their secretary, Effie Thompson. When the city passed a fire ordinance that would have made it nearly impossible for Black property owners to rebuild, Franklin and his colleagues fought it in court and won. Greenwood rebuilt on its own land.

That tent is the starting point for every legal fight that followed. Mother Randle's attorneys, led by Tulsa civil rights lawyer Damario Solomon-Simmons of the Justice for Greenwood Foundation, describe their work as part of the same line.

The State Court Closes the Door

In 2020 Mother Randle, Mother Fletcher and Uncle Redd sued the City of Tulsa, the Tulsa Regional Chamber, Tulsa County, the county sheriff and the Oklahoma Military Department. They argued that the massacre created a public nuisance that never ended, one that lives on in North Tulsa's lost wealth, health and property values. They also argued that the city had profited by marketing Greenwood's history while paying nothing to the people who lived it.

A Tulsa County judge dismissed the case in 2023. On June 12, 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal by an 8–1 vote. "We hold that relief is not possible under any set of facts that could be established consistent with plaintiff's allegations," Vice Chief Justice Dustin Rowe wrote. The court did not deny that the massacre happened. It said Oklahoma's public nuisance law was the wrong tool, and it left the question to lawmakers.

Oklahoma's own commission had already answered that question. In 2001 the state Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 recommended direct payments to survivors. The state and the city ignored it.

Factbook: Mother Randle and H.R. 4228

Survivor: Lessie Benningfield Randle, born November 10, 1914; age 112

Massacre: May 31–June 1, 1921; as many as 300 killed; about 35 blocks destroyed

State case: Randle v. City of Tulsa, 2024 OK 40, decided June 12, 2024 (8–1)

Federal review: Justice Department report released January 2025

The bill: H.R. 4228, introduced June 27, 2025, by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas)

Payment: $10,398,368 compensatory plus $10,398,368 punitive damages per survivor

Status: Referred to the House Judiciary Committee; 17 Democratic cosponsors

The Federal Government Admits What Happened

In January 2025 the Justice Department released the results of its review of the massacre under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. The report described a "coordinated, military-style attack" on Greenwood and found that victims' money and property were stolen and that they received no aid afterward. It also concluded that no one alive could still be prosecuted. The federal government had now confirmed the crime in its own words, and it still owed the survivors nothing under the law.

What H.R. 4228 Would Do

Rep. Al Green of Texas introduced H.R. 4228, the Original Justice for Living Survivors of the 1921 Tulsa/Greenwood Race Massacre Act, on June 27, 2025, with 17 Democratic cosponsors. The bill is short and direct. Within 30 days of certification by the Justice Department's civil rights chief, the Treasury would pay $10,398,368 in compensatory damages and the same amount in punitive damages to each survivor who was alive on May 1, 2025, or to the survivor's estate. The basis is the federal government's own failure to prevent, investigate or prosecute the massacre. The only proof required is a birth certificate.

Because Mother Fletcher was alive on May 1, 2025, her estate would also qualify. The bill has been sitting in the House Judiciary Committee since it was introduced. If the 119th Congress adjourns in January without acting, H.R. 4228 dies and must be introduced again in a new Congress, with Mother Randle another year older.

The Debt Comes Due

For 105 years, the strategy in Tulsa has been to wait until every witness was gone. Courts, commissions and city halls have offered apologies, history centers and studies. What none of them has offered is payment to the people who survived. Mother Randle has outlived nearly everyone who ever told her to be patient. The only thing left to decide is whether the United States pays her while she can still see it.

Take action today: Call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your representative and both senators. Tell them: "Mother Lessie Benningfield Randle turned 112 on November 10. She is the last living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Please co-sponsor H.R. 4228 and demand a vote before this Congress adjourns."

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Sources & Verification

Ages, dates and the court vote were checked against court records, the bill text published by Congress and news reports listed below. The 2021 quotation comes from Mother Randle's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee as reported by KOCO News. Casualty figures follow the 2001 Oklahoma commission and the 2025 Justice Department review.