OKLAHOMA CITY — 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 announcement comes just after Tulsa officials announced the creation of a commission to recommend how reparations can be made for the destruction of a thriving Black community.
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.
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.
Previous searches resulted in more than 120 sets of remains being located and about two dozen were sent to Intermountain Forensic in Salt Lake City in an effort to help identify them.
Across May 31 to June 1, 1921, a white mob massacred as many as many as 300 Black people, a long-suppressed episode of racial violence that destroyed a thriving community known as Black Wall Street and burned Tulsa’s Greenwood District to the ground. It ended with thousands of Black residents forced into internment camps overseen by the National Guard and more than 1,200 homes, businesses, schools and churches destroyed.
On Thursday, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum and City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper announced a committee to study a variety of reparations for survivors and descendants of the massacre and for the area of north Tulsa where it occurred.
The panel will review a 2023 report for the city and a 2001 report by a state commission on Tulsa Race Massacre. Both reports called for financial reparations, which Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum has opposed.
Reparations will almost certainly include a housing equity program, as the Beyond Apology Commission’s first task under Bynum’s order announced Thursday is to create one. The program would be for survivors of the massacre as well as descendants of victims and other residents of north Tulsa, where the massacre occurred. Only two known survivors are still alive.
“One of the most challenging issues to navigate during my time as mayor has been that of reparations for the victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and their families,” Bynum said in a statement.
He noted that the city’s Beyond Apology report last year found that residents “view reparations as not just cash payments.” Other recommendations included improved educational opportunities, housing and economic development, improved health care and the return of land to survivors and descendants.
“Anything can have a monetary value,” including scholarships and land, Hall-Harper said. “There may or may not be a transfer of greenbacks,” she said, while adding that she would be “absolutely disappointed” if reparations do not include cash payments.
State Rep. Monroe Nichols, the chair of the Oklahoma Legislative Black Caucus who also is running for Tulsa mayor, called formation of the committee a good start to addressing the wrongs done more than 100 years ago.
“We’ve got to take this talk of reparations out of the political sense and focus on other areas,” including home ownership and educational, Nichols said. “Education is an area where we should really sink our teeth into quite a bit.”
In June, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by the last two known massacre survivors, Viola Fletcher, 110, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, that sought restitution for the destruction.
Attorneys for the two survivors have asked the state court to reconsider the ruling and for the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the massacre under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007.
