There may have been a breakthrough in the search for bodies from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
A research team on Wednesday found 10 deteriorated coffins in an area of Oaklawn Cemetery where 18 black men reportedly were buried after the worst race riot in U.S. history, according to the Tulsa World and other media outlets. It will take weeks to exhume the remains and confirm whether they were victims of the disaster.
Oaklawn Cemetery sits just off 11th Street (aka Route 66) east of downtown. It is the oldest cemetery in the city. The research team will dig into other parts of the cemetery and other areas in Tulsa to see whether other victims are there.
The local newspaper reported:
Stackelbeck and historian Scott Ellsworth said Wednesday’s discovery is not inconsistent with funeral home and newspaper reports that 18 Black men killed in the massacre were buried in Oaklawn. Those reports do not say where the men were buried, although a June 3, 1921, Tulsa World story says they were buried “separately and in plain caskets.”
Likewise, Stackelbeck and Ellsworth said, it’s possible that the remains are of massacre victims other than the 18 — or people buried in that unusual fashion for some other reason. […}
Mayor G.T. Bynum, who ordered the search for unmarked burial places, said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference: “We have a lot of work to do to determine the nature of (this) mass grave and who is buried in it, but what we can say is that we have a mass grave in Oaklawn Cemetery where we have no record of anyone being buried.”
KTUL-TV in Tulsa interviewed local black people who said Wednesday’s discovery shouldn’t have been surprising:
A historic find for Tulsa, but one state representative Regina Goodwin says history uncovered years ago.
“We’ve been saying for a long time let’s start where we left off 20 years ago; we’ve been saying it, I don’t think people are listening,” said Regina Goodwin.
Goodwin says the 200 page Oklahoma Commission survey from 2001 places the coffins in this very location.
According to the report, at least more than a dozen bodies were buried in plain wooden coffins.
The Tulsa Race Massacre erupted from May 31 through June 1, 1921, in the prosperous Greenwood District after a young black man, Dick Rowland, was accused of assaulting a white woman in an elevator downtown. Rowland was taken into custody, and local black residents surrounded the jail to protect him after hearing rumors he was going to be lynched. A black man was lynched in nearby Jenks, Oklahoma, just a few weeks before.
A shot was fired — no one is sure from who — and it sparked the conflagration by white mobs that burned 35 square blocks of the city and left 10,000 people homeless. A total of 39 people were confirmed dead by the rioting, though a state commission many years later that investigated estimated the death count as high as 300.
Many Tulsa and Oklahoma residents were unaware of the massacre until the late 1990s. Local schools had never taught it, many local newspapers that reported the massacre disappeared from archives, and people who did hold the knowledge of it remained tight-lipped.
Having lived in Tulsa for almost a decade, I concluded the longstanding code of silence occurred because the white populace was embarrassed by the massacre, and the black populace still held underlying terror it could happen again. Fortunately, in the last two decades or so, residents have begun to speak out about it much more.
Bynum reopened the investigation after a Washington Post story two years ago. He said he never heard about the massacre until about 20 years ago. A follow-up story explains why he insisted on the excavations after a local woman sharply criticized him for starting them:
“Usually, my M.O. in a situation like that is to listen to the person and let them vent,” Bynum recalled. “After it went on for five or six minutes, I felt I had to interject and point out the history of what happened. I pointed out my family were white people who lived here in 1921. I’m not trying to make white people look bad. I’m just trying to find the truth. I said, ‘If your ancestors had their entire neighborhood burned down, and your neighbors were murdered, wouldn’t you want to find out what happened to them?’”
Finally, here is one of the most striking images from the excavations this week, captured by a Tulsa World photographer:
(Screen-capture image from KTUL-TV video of excavation efforts at Oaklawn Cemetery in Tulsa)