Researchers begin digging at Tulsa cemetery
Mass grave sought containing victims of 1921 massacre
TULSA — An archeological team on Monday afternoon began uncovering burial sites in Oaklawn Cemetery in the belief the graves contain the remains of as many as 18 Black men killed in Tulsa's 1921 Race Massacre.
The area in the cemetery' s southwest corner has long been identified as a likely resting place for the 18 because of the presence of two headstones bearing the names Ed Lockett and Reuben Everett, both of whom are known to have died as a result of the violence of May 31-June 1, 1921.
Several hundred yards away, core sampling began in what is known as the Clyde Eddy area. In 1999, Eddy told investigators that as a boy he saw workmen burying bodies in crates in that area.
The massacre resulted in the destruction of Tulsa's segregated Greenwood District. Death certificates for 37 victims — 25 black and 12 white — have been identified, but experts say the actual number of fatalities may have been in the hundreds.
The search is being conducted by the Oklahoma Archeological Survey with assistance from national forensic experts.
State archeologist Kary Stack el beck said the work that began Monday morning will look much different from last summer's excavation, which targeted an area suspected of being a mass burial site but proved to be an old stream bed that had been filled in.
This time, archeologists will not have to dig through 10 feet of "overburden" — soil and fill material added since 1921. For another, they are searching smaller, more defined areas.
"There is not that 10 feet of fill, so our excavation is not going to take as long," she said.
"In the case of the original 18, we're going to be focusing on anomalies that, based on their size, shape and orientation, are most likely individual graves," she said.
Forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield said she expects remains to be uncovered over the next few days, but that they will not be removed from the ground. Instead they will be examined and photographed in preparation for exhumation proceedings. It was not clear how long those proceedings would take.
The Clyde Eddy location is described as a smaller site than last summer's. If remains are found, it is expected they could be of more than one person but probably not the dozens or even hundreds of bodies some believe disappeared after the massacre.
The" original 18" included 13 identified victims and five unidentified. They are among the 37 for whom death certificates were issued following the massacre, so verifying the location would not add to the death count unless the remains of more than 18 people are found and can be linked to the massacre.
Finding the 18, though, would provide information about how the bodies were handled, whether more than 18 were buried at that location, and perhaps even some identification of individual remains. For that reason, researchers have been tracking family members of the 13 identified victims in an effort to obtain DNA.
Mayor G.T. Bynum said Monday's resumption of archeological activities represents a "continuation of commitment" to resolve questions about the number of people killed in the massacre and the location of their remains.
As in the past, Bynum declined to address the possibility of reparations to descendants of riot victims.
"My focus as mayor is entirely on moving this investigation forward," he said. "If there is a conversation to be held later on down the road, then that's a conversation Tulsans can have. Right now I want our focus to be on not getting too far in front of ourselves. I want it to be on the investigation."