Tulsa, OK looks for bodies from huge 1921 racist massacre

Archaeologists plan to excavate part of a cemetery in Tulsa, Okla., to see if it holds the remains of black residents slaughtered by white mobs during a massacre in 1921—according to The New York Times, one of the worst instances of racist violence in U.S. history.

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.

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