A third set of remains with a gunshot wound has been found at Tulsa cemetery in the search for graves of victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, according to a state official.
The remains are one of three sets exhumed so far during the latest search and were found in an area where 18 Black men killed in the massacre are believed to have been buried, Oklahoma State archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said in a statement on social media Friday.
“We have exhumed him, he is in the forensic lab and undergoing analysis,” on-site at Tulsa’s Oaklawn Cemetery, Stackelbeck said.
The discovery comes nearly a month after the first identification of remains previously exhumed during the search for massacre victims were identified as World War I veteran C.L. Daniel from Georgia.
Using DNA from descendants of his brothers, the remains of Daniel were identified by Intermountain Forensics, said Mayor G.T. Bynum and officials from the lab. He was in his 20s when he was killed.
Forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield said that no gunshot wound was found in Daniel’s remains, but said the remains were fragmented and a cause of death could not be determined.
The remains exhumed during the current search are among 40 graves found, Stackelbeck said, and meet the criteria for how massacre victims were buried, based on newspaper articles at the time, death certificates and funeral home records.
“Those three individuals are buried in adult-sized, wooden caskets so they have been removed from the ground and taken to our forensic facility on site,” Stackelbeck said.
In 1921, a white mob massacred as many as many as 300 Black people over the span of two days, a long-suppressed episode of racial violence that destroyed a thriving community known as Black Wall Street and ended with thousands of Black residents forced into internment camps overseen by the National Guard.
More than 120 graves were found during searches that began in 2020, with forensic analysis and DNA collected from about 30 sets of remains.
On Thursday, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum and City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper announced a new committee to study a variety of reparations for survivors and descendants of the massacre and for the area of north Tulsa where it occurred.
