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Update on Search for Tulsa Race Massacre Victims

TULSA, OKLAHOMA—According to a Tulsa World report, researchers looking for the remains of victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre are excavating an object larger than a typical coffin at Oaklawn Cemetery. On May 31 and June 1, 1921, a white supremacist mob attacked Tulsa’s Greenwood District, killing an estimated 100 to 300 people and destroying more than 35 square blocks of the wealthy Black neighborhood. In the late 1990s, now-deceased Clyde Eddy said that as a boy, after the massacre, he saw men digging a hole or a trench at Oaklawn Cemetery to bury a crate that he understood to hold the remains of several Black people. “We’re hoping to get that resolved in the coming days and get some answers as to what exactly we have going on there,” said state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck. About 50 grave shafts have been identified in this section of the cemetery, and the remains from three of them have been exhumed for forensic study, she added. To read more about the Tulsa Race Massacre, go to "A Sight Which Can Never Be Forgotten: The Tulsa Race Riot."