The historians have begun excavations in the search for hundreds of African Americans who were killed in the Tulsa Race Massacre.
In 1921, nearly one hundred years ago, some three hundred African Americans from Tulsa were brutally killed as a white mob of some 10,000 people descended on the Black Greenwood district.
Besides robbing local businesses and pillaging homes and churches in the area, the mob reportedly killed hundreds of Black people who resided in the place known as the economic and social mecca for African Americans.
Speaking of the search for the bodies of slaughtered locals, University of Florida’s forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield, whose great-aunt was robbed and had her home burned during the massacre, said:
“I realize we can tell this story the way it needs to be told … The story is no longer hidden. We’re putting the completion on this event.”
As the team behind the excavations confirmed, they will search for the unmarked mass grave around the Oaklawn Cemetery and the area near the Greenwood District where the killings occurred.
Previously, in July, the team has already searched one spot at the Oakland Cemetery without success.
“People, they were just robbed, white people coming in saying Black people had better property than they had and that that was just not right,” Stubblefield added.
“Burning, thieving, killing wasn’t enough. They had to prevent Black people from recovering.”
If the bodies of the victims are discovered, they will not be disturbed according to 43-year-old Mayor G.T. Bynum who admitted he didn’t even know about the Massacre until some two decades ago when his grandparents confirmed the tragic event.
“That’s a very common thing in Tulsa. That’s how you learned about it, not through books or the media or in school. People didn’t start talking about this event in Tulsa until about 20 years ago,” Bynum said.
As he added, the excavation will stop once the teams uncover the bodies whereas investigators will take over and “do what they need to do to identify them and determine a cause of death.”
Replaced!