The mayor said it was an “unprecedented” step to address one
of the worst instances of racist violence in American history, an episode that
for decades was rarely acknowledged in public by city leaders.
The archaeologists plan to dig up a small section of the
Oaklawn Cemetery, east of downtown, where they found evidence last year of a possible mass grave site. The
excavation, announced at a committee meeting on Monday, “would establish the
presence or absence of human remains, determine the nature of the interments,
and obtain data to help inform the future steps in the investigation, including
appropriate recovery efforts,” the city said in a statement.
“We are proposing this intermediate step to obtain just a
sample and additional information — essentially a proof of concept, if you will
— to demonstrate: ‘Do we, in fact, have human remains here? And do they seem to
be consistent with race massacre victims?’” Dr. Kary Stackelbeck, the state
archaeologist of Oklahoma, said at the meeting.
Previous investigations have identified possible locations
for the mass graves and compiled historical evidence of the massacre, which for
decades was rarely mentioned in textbooks or publicly acknowledged by white
city officials. The excavation, which is slated for April, raises the
tantalizing possibility that, after nearly a century of shame and inattention,
the bodies of at least some of the victims could finally be found.
“This step is
unprecedented,” Mayor G.T. Bynum said in an interview on Wednesday. “This is
the part of the search where we’re moving beyond what anyone’s ever done
before.”
The effort still needs to clear some procedural hurdles,
including the notification of family members of people whose graves are near
the site, Dr. Stackelbeck said in an interview. But Mr. Bynum said he was
confident the excavation would go forward.
Jim Goodwin, a lawyer in Tulsa and publisher of The Oklahoma
Eagle, said residents had been asking city leaders to find the bodies of the
victims for years. Mr. Goodwin’s grandfather was a business manager at a
newspaper that was burned down in the massacre.
“The fact that our mayor is doing it when requests have been
made of other mayors, the fact that he’s taking it seriously and making an
effort to do something about it, to his credit, is something I think is very
important rather than ignoring and trying to bury the memory,” Mr. Goodwin
said.
The rampage started on May 31, 1921, after an accusation
that a black man had sexually assaulted a white woman. Charges were later
dropped, and it was most likely that the man had tripped and accidentally
stepped on the woman’s foot, according to a 2001 report from the Oklahoma
Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.
Crowds gathered outside the courthouse where he was held.
Some black residents, concerned for the man’s safety, armed themselves to
patrol the streets. A mob of white men then attacked and set fire to the
predominantly black Greenwood neighborhood, including the prosperous business
district known as Black Wall Street.
As many as 300 people were killed, and a whole section of
the city destroyed, including more than 1,200 homes. Witnesses said they saw
bodies being dumped in some parts of the city.
To read more CLICK HERE
No comments:
Post a Comment