Hughes Van Ellis, one of the last three known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, has died, according to his grandnephew, Ike Howard. He was 102.
"He died waiting on justice," Howard told CNN.
Ellis was just a few months old when he and his sister, Viola Fletcher, fled the racial violence more than a century ago with their family -- leaving behind not only their home but a lifetime of opportunities, Ellis told CNN earlier this year.
"I lost 102 years. I don't want nobody else to lose that," he said.
Ellis and his sister, Viola Fletcher, 109, alongside fellow survivor Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108, have been locked in a yearslong legal battle with the City of Tulsa and other city officials in an effort to secure reparations for the damage inflicted during the massacre in June 1921.
The violence was inflicted by a White mob that targeted Black residents and destroyed Tulsa's Greenwood district, a thriving Black economic hub dubbed "Black Wall Street." As many as 300 hundred people were killed and more than 1,000 homes are estimated to have been destroyed, according to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum.
In July, an Oklahoma judge dismissed the survivors' lawsuit against the city and their attorneys have since appealed the decision. The state Supreme Court has said it would consider the appeal, but it is unclear when the Court will hear the case.
