Oklahoma State Archaeologist Kary Strackelbeck reviews the excavation at Oaklawn Cemetery Sue Ogrocki/The Associated PressScientists found 35 coffins in an unmarked mass grave close to the Tulsa Race Massacre.Officials discovered the remains of one man with a bullet in his left shoulder.Historians estimate that 300 people were killed in the Tulsa Race Massacre.For more stories, visit Insider's homepage.Archaeologists and scientists are currently investigating a mass grave close to the site of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. They have discovered skeletal remains including the skull and shoulder of a Black man who sustained gunshot wounds.Officials discovered the remains in October while excavating Oaklawn Cemetery's Black section in an effort to find mass graves connected to the 1921 attack by a white supremacist mob on the wealthy Black community of Greenwood, Tulsa.Officials claimed that 35 coffins had been found in the unmarked grave. Nineteen of the human remains were examined by scientists and taken to a science laboratory."Five of the nine juveniles were involved in the investigation," Phoebe Stubblefield (lead forensic anthropologist on the investigation), told reporters at a Friday news conference. The remaining four are adults. One of the older women was there. All the others were adults between 30 and 40 years old.Reporters were also informed by Stubblefield that they had found the remains of a Black man with a bullet lodged in his left shoulder.She said, "He does have associated trauma." "He has multiple projectile injuries."Kristi Williams is a member the Tulsa Mass Graves Public Oversight Committee. She told The Washington Post that her primary goal is to find more information about the remains found at the site.She stated that the priority was to determine who these remains belonged to and why they were not documented.Tulsa massacre in 1921 was one of the most horrific acts of racial violence ever committed in American history.Continue the storyAlthough the exact death toll has not been recorded, historians believe that 300 people were killed and 1,250 houses, businesses, and other community structures were destroyed in the massacre. It began after Black Tulsans stopped the lynchings of Dick Rowland (a Black teenager accused of sexual assaulting a white girl).Black Tulsans who survived were able to recount scenes of the night. They saw planes flying by white pilots dropping bombs from high above and Black bodies being dropped from bridges onto the Arkansas River.In honor of the 100th anniversary, President Joe Biden visited Tusla earlier this month. He gave a speech in which he asked for the US to "come into terms" with its past."For too long, the history of what happened here was kept silent and cloaked in darkness. He said that history doesn't have to be silent."Some injustices are so terrible, so horrible, so grievous that they cannot be buried no matter what people do. It is clear that only truth can bring healing, justice, and repair.Insider has the original article.
