AUGUST 3, 2024:
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — 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 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 (Aug. 2, 2024).
“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.
On Thursday, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum and City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper announced a new 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 massacre took place over two days in 1921, a long-suppressed episode of racial violence that destroyed a community known as Black Wall Street and ended with as many as 300 Black people killed, thousands of Black residents forced into internment camps overseen by the National Guard and more than 1,200 homes, businesses, schools and churches destroyed.
JULY 10, 2023:
UNDATED (AP)- An Oklahoma judge has thrown out a lawsuit seeking reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dashing an effort to obtain some measure of legal justice by survivors of the deadly racist rampage. Judge Caroline Wall on Friday (July 7, 2023) dismissed with prejudice the lawsuit trying to force the city and others to make recompense for the destruction of the once-thriving Black district known as Greenwood. The order comes in a case by three survivors of the attack. They are all now over 100 years old and sued in 2020 with the hope of seeing what their attorney called “justice in their lifetime.”
Extended version:
UNDATED (AP)- An Oklahoma judge has thrown out a lawsuit seeking reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dashing an effort to obtain some measure of legal justice by survivors of the deadly racist rampage.
Judge Caroline Wall on Friday dismissed with prejudice the lawsuit trying to force the city and others to make recompense for the destruction of the once-thriving Black district known as Greenwood.
The order comes in a case by three survivors of the attack, who are all now over 100 years old and sued in 2020 with the hope of seeing what their attorney called “justice in their lifetime.”
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum said in a statement that the city has yet to receive the full court order. “The city remains committed to finding the graves of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre victims, fostering economic investment in the Greenwood District, educating future generations about the worst event in our community’s history, and building a city where every person has an equal opportunity for a great life,” he said.
A lawyer for the survivors — Lessie Benningfield Randle, Viola Fletcher and Hughes Van Ellis — did not say Sunday whether they plan to appeal. But a group supporting the lawsuit suggested they are likely to challenge Wall’s decision.
“Judge Wall effectively condemned the three living Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors to languish — genuinely to death — on Oklahoma’s appellate docket,” the group, Justice for Greenwood, said in a statement. “There is no semblance of justice or access to justice here.”
Wall, a Tulsa County District Court judge, wrote in a brief order that she was tossing the case based on arguments from the city, regional chamber of commerce and other state and local government agencies. She had ruled against the defendants’ motions to dismiss and allowed the case to proceed last year.
Local judicial elections in Oklahoma are technically nonpartisan, but Wall has described herself as a “Constitutional Conservative” in past campaign questionnaires.
The lawsuit was brought under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, saying the actions of the white mob that killed hundreds of Black residents and destroyed what had been the nation’s most prosperous Black business district continue to affect the city today.
It contended that Tulsa’s long history of racial division and tension stemmed from the massacre, during which an angry white mob descended on a 35-block area, looting, killing and burning it to the ground. Beyond those killed, thousands more were left homeless and living in a hastily constructed internment camp.
The city and insurance companies never compensated victims for their losses, and the massacre ultimately resulted in racial and economic disparities that still exist today, the lawsuit argued. It sought a detailed accounting of the property and wealth lost or stolen in the massacre, the construction of a hospital in north Tulsa and the creation of a victims compensation fund, among other things.
A Chamber of Commerce attorney previously said that the massacre was horrible, but the nuisance it caused was not ongoing.
Fletcher, who is 109 and the oldest living survivor, released a memoir last week about the life she lived in the shadow of the massacre. It will become widely available for purchase in August.
In 2019, Oklahoma’s attorney general used the public nuisance law to force opioid drug maker Johnson & Johnson to pay the state $465 million in damages. The Oklahoma Supreme Court overturned that decision two years later.
JULY 31, 2021:
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — The bodies of 19 people exhumed from a Tulsa cemetery during a search for Tulsa Race Massacre victims have been reburied while protesters objected outside the cemetery. The remains were exhumed in June during a search for mass graves of potential victims of the 1921 massacre. City spokesperson Michelle Brooks said Friday’s reburial was required as part of the plan that allowed them to be removed. Several of the approximately two dozen protesters said they are descendants of massacre victims and should have been allowed to attend the ceremony that was closed to the public. Investigators have not confirmed any of the remains were massacre victims.
JUNE 4, 2021:
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — The City of Tulsa is resuming its search of a cemetery for possible victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Crews on Wednesday worked to define the boundaries of a mass-grave site that was discovered in October at the Oaklawn Cemetery. State archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said crews were able to locate three of the four corners of the mass-grave site and determined there are three additional burials in the area. The search began last year, and researchers in October found at least 12 sets of remains in coffins. Stackelbeck has said they’ve estimated as many as 30 bodies could be in the site.
MAY 27, 2021:
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — As the U.S. marks 100 years since the Tulsa Race Massacre, researchers, including descendants of Black victims of the violence, are preparing to resume a search for remains believed to have been hastily buried in mass graves. Although many details about the two terrifying days in 1921 eventually came to light after decades of shared silence by perpetrators and victims alike, some basic facts remain unknown. Among them is the true death toll and the names of many of the Black people who died at the hands of a white mob. The state pegged the death toll at 36, including 12 white people. But most historians who have studied the event estimate it to be between 75 and 300.
OCTOBER 19, 2020:
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A second search for Black victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre is to begin in a cemetery. Forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield is assisting in the search and is a descendant of a massacre survivor. She said the goal is to identify victims, notify their descendants and shed light on the violence. A similar excavation in the cemetery in July found no remains. The violence happened on May 31 and June 1 in 1921, when white residents attacked Tulsa’s Black Wall Street. An estimated 300 were killed and 800 wounded. The area that had been a cultural and economic mecca for African Americans was decimated.
OCTOBER 6, 2020:
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — A second search for the remains of victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre will begin on Oct. 19, 2020. The city said Tuesday that two more sections of Oaklawn Cemetery will be searched. Two other areas were searched during the summer, but no victim remains were found. The next areas to be searched are one where a boy said he saw Black people being buried shortly after the massacre and another where old funeral home records indicate that 18 Black people were buried. Ground-penetrating radar previously found anomalies indicating possible graves in both areas. The violence in 1921 left as many as 300 dead on the city’s Black Wall Street.
