Volume 134 No. 18
THE BLACK MEDIA AUTHORITY • AFRO.COM
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NOVEMBER 29, 2025 - DECEMBER 5, 2025
AP Photo/Mary Altaffer
Family, friends and members of the Black community across the country and beyond are mourning the death of Viola Ford Fletcher. The author and oldest living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre died on Monday, Nov. 24.
Tulsa Race Massacre survivor, Viola Ford Fletcher, dies at 111
By Liz Courquet-Lesaulnier Word in Black For more than a century, rest never came easily to Viola Ford Fletcher. When she closed her eyes, the horror of what she experienced in 1921 in the
Greenwood section of Tulsa haunted her dreams. “When I sleep, it is never very deep or for very long because of the anxiety and the things I see,” she explained in “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story,” her 2023 memoir. “Imagine having the
same horrible nightmare every night for 100 years.” On Nov. 24, “Mother Fletcher,” as she was called, the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, died surrounded by family. She was 111. Her grandson, Ike Howard, told
CNN that she left this world with “a beautiful smile” on her face. “She loved life, she loved people,” he said.
The child who watched Black Wall Street burn
angry White Tulsans — armed with guns and biplanes, fueled by alcohol and envy, driven by talk that a Black man had accosted a White woman — descended on Greenwood, a thriving Continued on A2
Fletcher was just 7 when 10,000
Federal judge voids indictments against Letitia James, Comey By Eric Tucker
afro.com
A federal judge on Nov. 24 dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, concluding that the prosecutor who brought the charges at President Donald Trump’s urging was illegally appointed by the Justice Department. The rulings from U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie halt at least for now a pair of prosecutions that had targeted two of the
president’s most high-profile political opponents and amount to a stunning rebuke of the Trump administration’s legal maneuvering to install an inexperienced and loyalist prosecutor willing to file the cases. The orders do not concern the substance of the allegations against Comey or James but instead deal with the unconventional manner in which the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was named to her position as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Defense lawyers said the Trump administration had no legal authority to make the appointment. In a pair of similar rulings, Currie agreed
and said the invalid appointment required the dismissal of the cases. “All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment,” including securing and signing the indictments, “were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside,” she wrote. The Justice Department did not immediately disclose its next steps, though it may appeal the rulings and could look to refile the cases. “The facts of the indictments against Comey and James have not changed and this will not be the final word on the matter,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson.
Indictments had been subject to multiple challenges
The challenges to Halligan’s appointment are just one facet of a multiprong assault on the indictments by Comey and James, whose multiple other efforts to dismiss the cases were still pending at the time of the Nov. 24 rulings. Both have separately asserted that the prosecutions were vindictive and emblematic of a weaponized Justice Department. Comey’s lawyers last week, in moving to get his case tossed out, seized on a judge’s findings of a constellation of grand jury Continued on A3
AP Photo
New York Attorney General Letitia James is no longer facing charges of mortgage fraud. The federal indictment against her was dismissed Nov. 24 when U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that the prosecutor who brought the cases against her and former FBI Director James Comey was illegally appointed, leading to the dismissal of both indictments.
Rev. Jesse Jackson in stable condition after hospital release By Megan Sayles AFRO Staff Writer msayles@afro.com
AP Photo/Meg Kinnard
Rev. Jesse Jackson is home and in stable condition after spending nearly two weeks in the hospital for observation related to progressive supranuclear palsy.
After spending two weeks at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Rev. Jesse Jackson has been discharged, according to a Nov. 24 statement from his family. The civil rights icon was hospitalized on Nov. 12 for observation related to progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurological disorder affecting movement and balance, which he was diagnosed with in April. Jackson, 84, remains in stable condition, his family said. “Our family would like to thank
the countless friends and supporters who have reached out, visited and prayed for our father. We bear witness to the fact that prayer works and would also like to thank the professional, caring and amazing medical and security staff at Northwestern Memorial Hospital,” said Yusef Jackson, son of Jesse Jackson and spokesperson for the family, in a Nov. 24 statement. “We humbly ask for your continued prayers throughout this precious time.” During his hospital stay, Jackson spent several days in the intensive care unit (ICU). On Nov. 16, his family clarified that he was not on life support and highlighted his call for 2,000 churches to provide
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2,000 food baskets to help families facing malnutrition during the holiday season. Jackson, a mentee of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., is known for creating Operation People United to Serve Humanity (PUSH), an organization dedicated to advancing economic justice for Black communities across the U.S, in 1971. He later launched the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984 to pursue equal rights for all Americans. In 1996, he merged the two organizations. Jackson had lived with Parkinson’s disease since 2013 until his diagnosis was updated to PSP in April.