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A group of survivors and descendants of victims of the Tulsa racial massacre have asked the Justice Department to take over the search for the mass graves of black residents who were killed in the 1921 rampage.
The group, Justice for Greenwood, said it did not trust city officials to lead the search for the graves or handle any remains that might be found.
“To ensure that the deaths of the massacre victims whose remains are found are properly and thoroughly investigated, we call on the Department of Justice to act as a neutral third-party investigator and take charge of the search. “the group said in a statement. letter signed by the three surviving victims of the massacre, as well as state lawmakers and community and city leaders.
The Justice Department is expected to investigate and “provide answers and conclusions that survivors of the massacre and their descendants, as well as the rest of the public, can trust,” they said in the letter dated Friday.
A spokeswoman said the Justice Department received the letter but declined to comment.
The city worked with archaeologists and forensic anthropologists to search for and identify the remains.
As many as 300 people died in the rampage, which was carried out by white looters who burned down the businesses and homes of black residents of the Greenwood neighborhood in June 1921. Greenwood, then a booming business district, included some 40 blocks of restaurants, hotels and theaters owned and operated by black entrepreneurs. The mob destroyed it in less than 24 hours.
A spokeswoman for the city of Tulsa declined to comment on the letter because members of Justice for Greenwood have an ongoing lawsuit against the city demanding compensation for the losses suffered by the descendants of the victims and survivors.
In 2018, Mayor GT Bynum announced that the city would conduct a body search, focusing on four sites, including Oaklawn Cemetery, which had been identified as potential locations for mass graves of the victims.
“The only way forward in our work to achieve reconciliation in Tulsa is to seek the truth honestly,” Bynum said in a statement posted on the city’s website. “We are committed to exploring what happened in 1921 through a collective and transparent process. “
The authors of the letter to the Justice Department claimed that some of those involved in the research effort, whom they did not name, were descendants of people who “both encouraged and actively participated in the research. violence that destroyed Greenwood in 1921 in the first place. . “
“The city has an obvious conflict of interest,” said Damario Solomon-Simmons, executive director of Justice for Greenwood. “We don’t think the city has the moral authority or the desire to do the right thing in this situation.”
Mr. Solomon-Simmons is also a lawyer who represents the three survivors and descendants of the victims in the lawsuit.
The massacre follows a chance encounter between two teenagers – Dick Rowland, 19, a black shoe shine, and Sarah Page, 17, a white elevator operator. Mr. Rowland entered the elevator on May 31, 1921. A scream was heard from inside and Mr. Rowland fled.
Accused of sexually assaulting Ms. Page, he was arrested that morning and jailed at the Tulsa County Courthouse. A large group of armed blacks, fearing Mr Rowland might be lynched, rushed to the courthouse to ensure his safety.
Charges against Mr Rowland were subsequently dropped and authorities ultimately concluded that he had most likely tripped and stepped on Ms Page’s foot, according to a 2001 report from the Oklahoma Commission to Investigate the Riot. Tulsa Race of 1921.
But on June 1, the day after the arrest, a large crowd of White Tulsans began torching businesses in Greenwood. People were killed in the streets or simply disappeared.
No one has ever been charged. In the years and decades since the massacre, the city and the Chamber of Commerce tried to cover it up, distorting the narrative to portray black residents as the violent instigators.
In June, Kary Stackelbeck, the state archaeologist, led a team that discovered more than 30 anonymous graves at Oaklawn Cemetery.
During a press conference that month, she told reporters that there was no date or document to identify the bodies.
Nineteen bodies were considered viable enough for forensic analysis, she said.
During the same press conference, Dr Phoebe Stubblefield, a forensic anthropologist, said only one of the bodies examined showed signs of trauma – a black man found with a bullet lodged in his shoulder.
She said the analysis of the bodies was preliminary and that a final report would eventually be presented to the city’s public watch committee at a public meeting.
Dr Stubblefield said the process of identifying bodies or determining when and how they died is complicated in large part because there is no information about them.
“It’s a difficult project,” said Dr Stubblefield. The part of the cemetery where the bodies were found is “shockingly under-documented,” she said.
The body of the man who was found with the bullet was well preserved, she said, but the remains of the other bodies that had been examined were “brittle and falling apart”, making it difficult determining signs of trauma.
The city re-buried the bodies after the scan, infuriating survivors and descendants of the victims, Mr Solomon-Simmons said.
“None of these bodies have been correctly identified,” he said. “It’s part of the uproar.”
In a letter to city council, Mr Bynum said the bodies had been “temporarily” re-buried as part of a plan that was approved and discussed in public meetings before the exhumation began.
He said the goal was to determine if any of the remains belonged to the victims of the massacre, a process that could take years, and to find the DNA available to link the remains to the descendants.
“We have been clear since we started this process a few years ago that the city of Tulsa is here for the long haul,” Bynum said. “When you start looking for victims almost a century after their burial, there are no quick and easy answers.”
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