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Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Hughes "Uncle Redd" Van Ellis Passed Away!

One of remaining survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre passed away.

As you know, Israel is causing intense bombing in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. and foreign nations are greenlighting this country to commit genocide among 2.4 million living in a tiny land mass blocked by land, sea and air. Egypt and Turkey are looking to provide humanitarian aid to the Gazans. Israel has threatened to attack them if aid is given.

Israel's blockade is a war crime and the U.S. is allowing it.

The Tulsa Race Massacre is an example of the outcome of turning a blind eye and racism.

Hughes “Uncle Redd” Van Ellis, one of the last three known survivors of the 2021 Tulsa Race Massacre, has died at age 102, his family announced, CNN reports.

Democratic Oklahoma state rep. Regina Goodwin shared the family statement reporting his death on Monday night.

“He died waiting on justice,” his grandnephew, Ike Howard, told CNN.

Ellis was a months-old baby when he and his older sister Viola Fletcher fled racial violence in Tulsa’s Greenwood District when a white mob attacked the well-to-do Black community. Ultimately, hundreds of residents died and rows of houses were burned to the ground, KOCO news reported.

Ellis told CNN earlier this year that he and his family, among many others, had to leave their homes and a “lifetime of opportunities.”

“I lost 102 years,” he said. “I don’t want nobody else to lose that.”

In one of America’s worst cases of racial violence, the massacre began when a white mob attacked an area known as “Black Wall Street” and committed arson, shooting, and aerial bombing from private planes, CNN said. As many as 300 people died and more than 1,000 homes were destroyed according to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, CNN wrote.

Ellis lived in Denver at the time of his death and was a veteran of World War II.” KOCO reported.

He, his sister, 108, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108, the last known survivors have been embroiled in a longtime legal struggle against the city of Tulsa and city officials for reparations, CNN said. Last summer an Oklahoma judge dismissed the case, but their attorneys have appealed the case, which the state supreme court said it would consider.

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