Latest search for 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre victims ends with 3 more found with gunshot wounds

The latest search for the remains of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre victims has ended with three more sets containing gunshot wounds, investigators said.

The latest search for the remains of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre victims has ended with three more sets containing gunshot wounds, investigators said. The three are among 11 sets of remains exhumed during the latest excavation in Oaklawn Cemetery, state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said Friday. “Two of those gunshot victims display evidence of munitions from two different weapons,” Stackelbeck said. “The third individual who is a gunshot victim also displays evidence of burning.” Forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield, who will remain on site to examine the remains, said one victim suffered bullet and shotgun wounds, while the second was shot with two different caliber bullets. Searchers are seeking simple wooden caskets because they were described at the time in newspaper articles, death certificates and funeral home records as the type used for burying massacre victims, Stackelbeck has said. The massacre took place over two days in 1921, a long-suppressed episode of racial violence that destroyed a community known as Black Wall Street and ended with as many as 300 Black people killed, thousands of Black residents forced into internment camps overseen by the National Guard and more than 1,200 homes, businesses, schools and churches destroyed.