Excavation Work Concludes At Oaklawn Cemetery; DNA Research To Continue

Researchers provided an update as excavation work wraps up at Oaklawn Cemetery in Tulsa. Anthropologist Dr. Phoebe Stubblefield, Mayor GT Bynum, and others spoke about the investigation and the search for possible victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Friday, November 18th 2022, 7:57 pm

By: News On 6

TULSA, Okla. -

Archeologists are done with their second round of excavation work at Oaklawn Cemetery, in the search for possible victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Experts are now saying what they found last summer, was not a mass grave. While the team has stopped using the term "mass grave," they still feel confident they are in the right area to find massacre victims. After about three weeks of work at Oaklawn Cemetery, the team said it found 32 burials and took remains from eight of them to study in their lab.

At a news conference on Friday, anthropologist Dr. Phoebe Stubblefield gave new details on the burial of a man who they found with part of a bullet in his skull. His remains were found with a shoe, and multiple keys rusted together.

"His level, his manner of burial indicates haste, or certainly the lack of consideration we're used to seeing with the many burials we've examined,” Stubblefield said.

Dr. Kary Stackelbeck publicly walked back on using the term "mass grave" after the first round of excavation which started in 2020 and was completed last summer.

"Our original assessment was not accurate of that mass grave, and that's what we went through and we articulate that throughout the report. But nonetheless, we were finding individuals that were consistent with the victims that we were searching for,” Stackelbeck said.

The 1,000-page report she is referring to can be found here.

Volume 1

Volume 2

"I think the challenge on the notion - is there a mass grave where there are people lined up in a row, like we thought might be, that is not the case. Is Oaklawn Cemetery still a mass grave? Yes. We have documented evidence that it is. It's just that these are individuals buried throughout the cemetery rather than in one spot, as best we know,” Mayor GT Bynum said.

Public Oversight Committee Chair Kavin Ross looks forward to the future of the investigation.

"I really wanna thank the City of Tulsa for being patient during this time as we just, inch by inch going towards truth."

The next steps involve DNA analysis, and the team said the remains that were removed from the ground will be reburied sometime next year.