Update on Search for Tulsa Race Massacre Victims

A “large crate” has been uncovered by researchers looking in Oaklawn Cemetery for unmarked Tulsa Race Massacre burials, state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said Wednesday in a video released by the city of Tulsa.

“Among the grave shafts we’ve exposed is one of particular interest because it is a large crate that is bigger than a normal-sized coffin,” Stackelbeck said.

“That one we’re doing hand excavation on. We’re hoping to get that resolved in the coming days and get some answers as to what exactly we have going on there.”

The find is significant because of the story told by the now-deceased Clyde Eddy in the late 1990s.

Eddy said that, as a boy, he encountered men digging a hole or trench, apparently to bury a crate that Eddy remembered as containing the bodies of several Black persons.

This led to several attempts over the years to identify the “Clyde Eddy site” in Oaklawn. The story and subsurface radar suggesting anomalies led to the current excavation.

As it happens, archaeologists seem to have found more or less normal but unmarked burial sites in what was once the Black pauper’s section.

Stackelbeck said about 50 grave shafts have been identified, of which three have been completely unearthed for exhumation.

Exhumed remains have been taken to an on-site forensics lab for further study.

Tulsa’s 1921 Race Massacre was one of the nation’s most intense examples of racial violence. It resulted in the almost complete destruction of Tulsa’s Black business and residential section, known as Greenwood, leaving thousands homeless and hundreds injured and killed.

The exact number of deaths is unknown, but rumors of unmarked burials have persisted since the massacre.

In 2018, Mayor G.T. Bynum announced the city would begin a systematic attempt to locate those burials.