The City of Tulsa continues its search for the remains of people murdered in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
The massacre was a white supremacist terrorist act that left as many as 300 dead in Tulsa’s wealthy Black Wall Street community. Some remains are still missing.
Archaeologists took soil core samples at Newblock Park west of downtown between Charles Page Boulevard and the Arkansas River Thursday. State Archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said that anomalies in the earth uncovered by sampling can tell a story.
“When you go over a larger area, presumably, you’re going to have a high degree of consistency,” Stackelbeck said. “It’s going to look very similar across a given area unless you encounter something different.”
When an archaeologist uncovers an inconsistency, it could mean that something lies beneath the soil.
“So, that can be anything from a buried building foundation, to a trench, to a burial, right,” Stackelbeck said. “So, there’s a number of different things that can actually cause that and might not necessarily be what we’re looking for.”
Excavation is required to identify what’s causing an inconsistency.
The 1921 graves investigation in September sampled soil at an area known as “The Canes” near the Arkansas River. Researchers are still waiting for the results from those soil samples.
For more information on the investigation, visit the City of Tulsa’s website.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
