Martin Schoeller
Martin Schoeller LLC
Mother Lessie Benningfield Randle
Mother Lessie Benningfield Randle, born 1914, 108 years old
In the fall of 2023, I traveled to Washington D.C., Colorado, and Oklahoma to photograph the last three remaining survivors from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre—Mother Fletcher, Mother Randle, and Uncle Redd.
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. On May 31, 1921, Dick Rowland, a young black shoe shiner, was held in a county courthouse over allegations of assaulting a white woman. An enraged mob of white militants, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, descended upon the Greenwood district of the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Over the next two days they killed an estimated 300 people, displaced more than 8,000, and looted and burned 1,500 homes. They completely destroyed 35 square blocks of the prosperous and flourishing Greenwood “Black Wall Street” neighborhood.
