City, Public Oversight Committee Discuss Next Steps In Mass Grave Exhumation Process

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Graves Investigation team on Thursday discussed the next steps when it comes to the discovery of a mass grave found last October at Oaklawn Cemetery.  

The city said the goal is to exhume the remains this summer so scientists can work to determine whether they are connected to the Tulsa Race Massacre.  

But a lot of work needs to be done before that can happen, including adding about 10 more archeologists to the team, the city said. 

The city said a plan for reinterment, or putting the remains back in the ground, must be established before any remains are removed. 

Not everyone on the team agrees the remains should go back to Oaklawn Cemetery if they are found to be victims of the massacre.   

The city said the law requires consent of next of kin to submit a Notice of Disinterment/Re-interment, or a Request for Disinterment Permit. 

“The remains at Oaklawn are currently unidentified, so we are unable to establish their legal representatives, descendants, or legal guardians,” the re-interment plan proposal states.  

However, the city said the law provides another option.  

The plan goes on to state, “If the decedent was a person the final disposition of whose body is the financial responsibility of the state or a political subdivision of the state, the public office or employee responsible for arranging the final disposition of remains of the decedent may grant consent…Accordingly, the City of Tulsa meets the statutory requirement to provide consent for a Notice of Disinterment/Re-interment or a Request for Disinterment Permit.”  

“Any next of kin that we do identify get the authority to control the reinterment,” University of Florida Anthropologist Dr. Phoebe Stubblefield explained. “If we find 18 traumatized individuals and get next of kin for 10, that means the remaining eight unidentified individuals are ones that we need to consider how they’ll be reinterred, because the city stays their next of kin,” Stubblefield said, as an example.  

Once everyone on the investigation team can agree on a plan, it will be submitted to the Oklahoma State Department of Health, which would approve or deny the plan.  

The Public Oversight Committee will meet again in February to continue discussing how to move forward.  

"As soon as we have a recommendation on the reinterment plan from the Public Oversight Committee, we would proceed with filing that paperwork with the Oklahoma State Department of Health,” City of Tulsa Deputy Mayor Amy Brown said in the meeting.  

The current re-interment plan proposal can be found here.  

Oaklawn Cemetery is not the only location the team plans to search.

The city announced Thursday during the meeting that the owner of Rolling Oaks Memorial Gardens Cemetery, who lives out of state, said he is invested in the search, but wants to wait until he can be here in person for the search and would feel most comfortable doing that after he gets his COVID-19 vaccine.