Search resumes for mass graves from 1921 massacre

TULSA, Okla. — A team of researchers and historians on Monday resumed test excavations of potential unmarked mass graves from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

A backhoe operator began slowly moving dirt at Tulsa’s Oaklawn Cemetery, where ground-penetrating radar earlier this year determined there was an anomaly consistent with mass graves.

On May 31 and June 1 in 1921, white residents and civil society leaders looted and burned Tulsa’s Black Greenwood district, known as Black Wall Street, to the ground, and used planes to drop projectiles on it.

The attackers killed up to 300 Black Tulsans, and forced survivors for a time to live in internment camps overseen by National Guard members.