Tulsa officials said Thursday they have discovered 32 new undocumented graves tied to the 1921 Race Massacre as part of their latest excavation efforts at Oaklawn Cemetery. Remains of three more people have been exhumed.
X-rays completed this week of those three individuals showed no physical signs of trauma but that could change, according to Phoebe Stubblefield, a forensic anthropologist with the University of Florida.
“When we receive remains into the lab, we X-ray them and that is usually our first way of learning if there’ll be trauma or might be trauma to expect,” she said. Their analysis is looking for radiopaque materials that would stand out such as bullets or pellets.
After the initial examinations, Stubblefield said they move to a cleaning phase before doing another round.
“If a bullet is not retained by the body, but there is damage to bone, we won’t notice it often until after cleaning,” she said. “Currently, we’re still in the cleaning phase. The X-ray phase did not show any signs of a problem. So, it could change. We’re making progress.”
This is the sixth field season for the investigation that launched in 2018 under former Mayor G.T. Bynum. When the investigation left off last year, researchers had identified 16 grave shafts, or pockets of dirt underground likely holding human remains, said Kary Stackelbeck, a state archaeologist with the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey.
Before this season began, excavations had uncovered at least 273 graves, 265 of which were unmarked.
