11 Exhumed in Latest Search Efforts for 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Victims

Researchers are digging up the ground in Oklahoma City to learn more about the Tulsa Race Massacre that took place in 1921, and they have unearthed 11 new sets of remains during the latest dig at Oaklawn Cemetery. 

Mobs of white people and black people confronted each other after a story ran in the local paper about contact between a white man and a black woman stirred up resentments under the surface. A few days later, 35 city blocks were in ruins and historians believe about 300 people died.

State archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said that three of the bodies among the 11 recently unearthed show signs of gunshot wounds. Stackelbeck said two of the bodies were hit by different kinds of guns, and the third showed “evidence of burning.”

Phoebe Stubblefield, a forensic anthropologist, added that one of the bodies had both bullet and gunshot wounds, while another had obviously been hit by two different kinds of bullets. 

Diggers are looking for plain wooden coffins that match the descriptions given in newspaper reports of the time. They’re also combing over death certificates and funeral home records to find graves that belong to massacre victims. 

Now that they’re out of the ground, the remains will go to the Intermountain Forensics facility in Salt Lake City for further testing. There is a good chance that the individual will be able to be identified given advances in DNA technology. Being able to identify individual people with DNA has been possible for decades, but simply having a genetic profile isn’t enough to give someone a name. Investigators have to be able to reference that profile to one on record that is attached to a name, which obviously won’t be possible for those who died more than 100 years ago 

But genetic genealogy has changed that. Popular sites people use for tracing their ancestors now bank DNA voluntarily submitted by users so that family trees can be reconstructed. This has been a boon for law enforcement, as it allows them to start comparing suspect DNA to those who have a family connection. This process famously caught the serial killer called the Golden State Killer in California in 2018. 

This latest search in Oklahoma city is over for the moment, but digs have been ordered for several years, so researchers may get the chance to go back and identify more massacre victims.