Tulsans, Leaders Push For Answers Nearly 100 Years After Tulsa Race Massacre

2021 marks the centennial for the Tulsa Race Massacre, and it could be the year for answers about a mass grave at Oaklawn Cemetery. Since 1921, there have been claims that the official estimate of 39 deaths was low. Eyewitnesses have described mass burials in common graves. Many mentioned Oaklawn Cemetery.

One account came from Clyde Eddy, who remembered watching men digging a trench at Oaklawn days after the massacre when he was a child. Eddy said he saw large boxes stacked nearby.

"We opened the first box, and there were three bodies of black people in there. The stench was terrible," Eddy said in 1999.

Eddy was sure he saw 18 or 20 bodies buried in that trench, left unmarked, near the only two headstones from the period.

No serious effort was made to determine the truth about the burials at Oaklawn until the 75th anniversary of the massacre in 1996. After a series of ground radar scans, investigators found some graves that were expected to be there and a feature which a report said, "bears all the characteristics of a trench ...with the properties of a mass grave." Those findings were documented in a 2001 State Commission report, but the search stopped there.

More than a decade later, two Tulsa City Councilors, Jack Henderson, and G.T. Bynum, saw the report. 

"He and I really looked into it to try to find out more about it, and were shocked to realize there could be a mass grave right in the middle of Tulsa and the City hadn't done any work, or allowed an excavation to move forward to identify whether or not it was there or not," Bynum said. "So, we brought this information to the Mayor's administration at the time, and he didn't want to move forward on it. I remember leaving that discussion and Councilor Henderson and I agreed, if either of us was ever Mayor, we were going to move forward on it."

Bynum was elected in 2016. Though Councilor Henderson lost his election that year, newly-elected Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper was just as determined to find out who was buried at Oaklawn.

State Senator Kevin Matthews chairs the Race Massacre Centennial Commission and credits those leaders with the political will to take on this issue.

"This whole thing has been Tulsa's dirty secret," said Matthews. "We had elected officials involved, back as far as when it happened, and then we've had elected officials try to address it."

Among those who laid the groundwork were State Senator Maxine Horner and State Representative Don Ross, who helped establish the Greenwood Cultural Center and pushed for a state investigation.

As the 100th anniversary approaches, there is a renewed effort to get answers at Oaklawn.

The latest series of scans and a limited excavation located 12 caskets in the corner of the cemetery long suggested as the place to search.

With an unmarked, common grave now confirmed, the next steps could determine who is there and how they died.

"I heard from people all over town of all political parties and races, who said, 'Thank you; it's about time,'" Bynum said. "'I want to know if I live in a city with a mass grave in it and if there is one, the folks who are in it deserve a proper burial and their descendants deserve to know what happened to them.'"

The next step is in the courts, where a judge must approve of an exhumation so scientists can open the caskets they have located and continue searching for more.