Excavation efforts again underway at Oklahoma cemetery for Tulsa Race Massacre victims

Another round of excavation efforts were underway at an Oklahoma cemetery on Tuesday as part of a larger bid to locate and identify victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

The city’s Greenwood district, at the time a black economic hub known as “Black Wall Street," was gripped with violence from May 31 through June 1 in 1921. According to historical accounts, the tension was sparked by a confrontation with a group of angry white residents demanding a young black man be lynched.

The following day, the Ku Klux Klan and white rioters descended on Tulsa, prompting its governor to declare martial law and call on the National Guard. Historians have estimated about 300 people were killed and another 800 wounded amid the robbing and burning of businesses, homes and churches.

Despite its scope and brutality, the massacre has only recently become a topic of discussion in history classrooms and beyond.

In this July 17, 2020, file photo, workers use ground penetrating radar as work continues on a search for a potential unmarked mass grave from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, at Oaklawn Cemetery in Tulsa, Okla. A second excavation begins Monday, Oct. 19, 2020, at a cemetery in an effort to find and identify victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and shed light on violence that left hundreds dead and decimated an area that was once a cultural and economic mecca for African Americans. (Sue Ogrocki/)

“I realize we can tell this story the way it needs to be told, now,” Phoebe Stubblefield, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Florida and a descendant of a survivor of the massacre who is assisting the search, told the Associated Press.

“The story is no longer hidden. We’re putting the completion on this event.”

The Oaklawn Cemetery in North Tulsa, where a search for remains of victims ended without success over the summer, and a site nearby the Greenwood District, are both at center of the latest round of search efforts.

Scans taken at the cemetery with ground-penetrating radar earlier this year picked up anomalies consistent with a mass grave. The search for victims killed during the Tulsa riots were initially supposed to kick off in April but later delayed until July amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The spot actually turned out be a filled-in creek, said Mayor G.T. Bynum, who first proposed looking for victims of the violence in 2018. He later set aside $100,000 to fund efforts after past searches failed to uncover victims.

Bynum noted that if remains are found at any point, they will not be disturbed and excavation efforts will be halted so researchers can do what is necessary to identify them.

With News Wire Services