Skip to main content

New top story from Time: 100 Years After the Tulsa Race Massacre, Meet the Forensic Anthropologist Searching for Victims’ Remains

https://ift.tt/3ulXyWV

A century after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, during which a white mob torched Black homes and businesses in the Oklahoma city’s Greenwood area, which was also known as Black Wall Street, some basic questions about the event remain unanswered. Some estimates that say up to people 300 died, but information on the victims’ identities and exact numbers is missing.

Then, last fall, a clue was discovered: after years of researchers searching for evidence, 11 coffins were found in the city’s Oaklawn Cemetery, and scholars believe they may contain victims’ remains. On Tuesday, the anniversary of the tragedy, in hopes of finding some resolution, a full excavation of the site will begin and is expected to last well into the summer.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“This first excavation is probably not the last, because this site isn’t the only site of interest,” says Phoebe Stubblefield, a University of Florida forensic anthropologist and a leader of the dig. “If my colleagues and I confirm this summer that these remains are our race-massacre dead, it doesn’t shut the door on what happened in that history.”

Stubblefield, 52, was recruited for this investigation about two decades ago, in part because her parents were Tulsa natives and she grew up visiting family there in the summer. But she didn’t realize she had a personal connection to the massacre until she took the job.

She spoke to TIME about about her family’s ties to this history, what the excavation entails, and how the search for the remains of Tulsa Race Massacre victims fits into a long and troubling history of the careless treatment of Black bodies.

TIME: In general, What does a forensic anthropologist do?

STUBBLEFIELD: I help people who investigate deaths. I help them get an idea what the cause of death is, or I help them identify who the person is, if all that’s left are bones.

Are there certain tools of the trade that forensic anthropologists use that are key to doing your work?

We use a lot of measuring devices. We do a lot of photography. We use infrared light to examine wounds, for example, or bruises or tattoos. And we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how better to improve our analyses. My research is focused on trying to find a better way to estimate time since death; trying to better establish a connection to the community for anatomical gifts, skeletons preferably, because our parent field, physical anthropology, has its history; and in grave piracy. We often lack skeletal remains for any purpose—teaching, research. We lack remains that have clear sources, you know, someone donated them or they were purchased, back when you could easily purchase a skeleton.

TULSAMASSACRE
Nick Oxford—The Washington Post/Getty ImagesArchaeologists and observers watch during a test excavation of the potential 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Graves at Oaklawn Cemetery in Tulsa, Okla., on July 13, 2020.

We’re seeing those issues play out with the controversy over the recently discovered remains of a MOVE bombing victim, right?

I probably have not one colleague, at least not in my generation or older, who can say they trained without being exposed to unprovenanced skeletal remains. The MOVE remains had provenance, they were just being used without any notion of what would the descendants or their families want. And I get how that happens because that’s part of our history with the use of human remains in the United States. [There’s a long history of using] the remains of Black people for anatomy instruction without any kind of consent. Probably by 2000, we’ve shifted away from just using remains willy-nilly and have embraced as a discipline more—not fully—the idea of making sure someone associated with those remains gave consent.

How did you get interested in becoming a forensic anthropologist?

Our house [in Los Angeles] had that collection of encyclopedias that people used to always have. And part of that collection [was] a Time-Life series on natural history; one of the books was on the Neanderthal. So some of the vocabulary of human paleoanthropology I was familiar with before I got to college because of that series. Sometime late my freshman year I sat down with myself and looked at my academic record and considered which courses I was enjoying quite a bit, and anthropology was it.

Your family has a connection to Tulsa and the massacre that happened there 100 years ago. To what extent did that family history factor into your decision to go into this field or pursue certain projects in this field perhaps once you were in it?

The Tulsa race massacre wasn’t talked about, so I didn’t know about it until my colleague Lesley Rankin-Hill said around 1997, “There’s this project to investigate this race riot,” and I said, “What race riot?” The project needed another forensic anthropologist, and I’d visited Tulsa all my life every summer growing up, and she knew my parents were from there, so she thought I’d be interested. The first thing I did was I call home and said, “You know, there was this race riot,” and my mother said, “Yes, your Aunt Anna lost her house.”

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

How does it feel to gear up for this next stage of the dig in on June 1? What’s going through your head?

I’m hoping and praying we find the right people. I’m just hoping and praying because this, you know—I’m contributing to my parents’ city. I still have cousins there, but they’re not directly involved. Sometimes I’m reminding them that the investigation’s going on.

I just pray that we find the right people because we’ve been looking for them for a long time and we finally got to this point where we could actually test the locations that witnesses said are important. I just hope we get to all of them.

What’s the state of the investigation at the moment?

In October of last year, we found an actual mass grave—a collection of coffins packed in close together, perhaps stacked on top of each other. We have not excavated all of it. We excavated one part and found multiple plain caskets packed in together, and then a few masculine bones that were robust, [which] makes me think we might find a collection of men. We were looking for 18 adult males packed into one area, or nearly one area, to represent that event, where the people we call the Original 18 were buried in Oaklawn. All that information disappeared more than 20 years ago because records for Oaklawn Cemetery conveniently disappeared.

We literally just scratched the surface, so we’re going to go back and test all of them, and see if we can tell who’s in there, you know, if time and preservation allows.

Stubblefield speaks during a news conference as work continues on an excavation of a potential unmarked mass grave from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre at Oaklawn Cemetery on July 14, 2020.
Sue Ogrocki—APStubblefield speaks during a news conference as work continues on an excavation of a potential unmarked mass grave from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre at Oaklawn Cemetery on July 14, 2020.

What does testing involve?

We’re bringing in a building so we can have a temperature-controlled area to see what skeletal remains are there and look for signs of gunshot wounds, because most of the individuals [killed in the massacre] died from gunshot wounds. We’ll look for signs of burning that’ll mainly be based on the positioning of the bones in the casket. If they’re still positioned in the pugilistic pose [a defensive posture], then we’ll have an idea that that’s them. Other signs of burning won’t preserve well, and so mainly it’s the gunshot wounds. We’re looking for the circumstances to occur together— mostly males, with gunshot wounds, in one spot at Oaklawn.

Where does this latest stage fit into the history of investigating the history of the Tulsa race massacre?

So 20 years ago, Scott Ellsworth, who did his dissertation research on the Tulsa Race Riot, got together with the state archaeologists and they started interviewing survivors that were still living, and they collected narratives and sorted them for possibilities of being useful or accurate, and came up with three locations that had a high likelihood of having either burials or mass graves. From newspaper documentation, we knew on June 2 that they were burying people they were calling insurrectionists in Oaklawn Cemetery, in the Black potters’ field. We’ve surveyed another site, Newblock Park, multiple times and have not gotten good signals. Rolling Oaks is another area particularly of interest, because we haven’t surveyed it yet; [in there] would be individuals who have not been identified, and who knows the state of remains, because these would be people probably hidden in burned debris.

Lon Tweeten for TIME

How are you hoping the excavation beginning on June 1 helps answer unanswered questions about the massacre?

Technically the whole issue of “this event happened” is one of the questions that we’re testing. I have no doubt. There are images, right? But the people of Greenwood have lived for a long time with multiple narratives about this race massacre having occurred, part of that narrative being, “How many black individuals were killed? How many were lost?” And we don’t know, because the National Guard did not allow any funerals to occur. I don’t know why they did that, but it made it difficult to come up with a count of casualties as a result.

Having this investigation will give us some resolution on how many people ended up in that Oaklawn Black potters’ field area. We hope to have DNA analysis to assist us with identification. I want to validate the claims of Greenwood residents who long said we need to find these people. I am looking forward to contributing their story back to the living. This is their time to have their appropriate recognition.

What is it like to be a Black woman doing this research?

It’s humbling and I’m grateful because I didn’t go into forensic anthropology to work on the Tulsa race massacre. I went into forensic anthropology because I wanted to tell people stories from their skeletons. I’m telling people’s stories, speaking for the dead and sometimes their families. And so I’m grateful to live long enough to make it now because 20 years ago, we didn’t get to test a single one of our sites; everything just fizzled out. I did not expect we would get a chance.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MTA Board of Directors Welcomes Lydia So

MTA Board of Directors Welcomes Lydia So By Stephen Chun Lydia So, a championed public servant, advocate for the AAPI community and an accomplished urban planner, designer and architect, has joined the SFMTA’s Board of Directors. She was appointed in June 2023 and sworn in by Mayor London Breed on Aug. 23, 2023, at Central Subway’s Chinatown Rose Pak Station, in line with her personal connection with the Chinatown community.   So was born in Hong Kong and is fluent in Chinese (Cantonese). She is the founder of the architecture firm SOLYD Architecture, Management and Design. She is a former Historic Preservation Commissioner for the San Francisco Planning Department where she voted in favor of the Potrero Yard Modernization Project that is expected to bring hundreds of housing units to our city while maintaining the functions of the SFMTA. She was the first Chinese American Historic Preservation Commissioner, implemented the Planning Department’s Racial and Social Equity po...

SFMTA Staffers Share their Favorite SF Bike Rides

SFMTA Staffers Share their Favorite SF Bike Rides By Eillie Anzilotti Happy Bike Month, San Francisco! To celebrate, we’re sharing some of SFMTA staffers’ favorite rides through the city. From protected bike lanes to quick-build projects to Slow Streets, the JFK Promenade, and the Great Highway, all of the routes roll through projects that the SFMTA has completed in the last several years to make biking through San Francisco easier, safer, and joyful. We hope you get some inspiration for your next ride--and share your favorite route with us! For easy trip planning, we’ve included each ride below on an interactive map .   Jeffrey Tumlin, Director of Transportation: “I explore all of San Francisco by bike, but this is a standard trip: Starting from the Castro, I head up the Slow Street on Noe, where I like to admire the trees and people watch in Duboce Park. Then, I ride north on Scott to Fell Street along the Panhandle. When I reach the new JFK Promenade, it’s amazing how ...

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J बिग बॉस 14: सलमान का फार्महाउस, 16 प्रतिभागी, देखिए धमाकेदार लिस्ट

सलमान खान के शो बिग बॉस के नए सीज़न को लेकर काफी समय से अटकलें चल रही हैं और अब इस सीज़न को लेकर काफी खबरें बाहर आ चुकी हैं। सबसे पहली बात तो ये कि ये सीज़न सलमान खान अपने from टेलीविजन की खबरें | Television News in Hindi | TV Serials Update in Hindi – FilmiBeat Hindi http:/hindi.filmibeat.com/television/bigg-boss-14-details-salman-khan-s-panvel-farmhouse-16-contestants-see-list-090656.html?utm_source=/rss/filmibeat-hindi-television-fb.xml&utm_medium=23.11.231.151&utm_campaign=client-rss

How Improving Muni Also Makes Life Better for Drivers

How Improving Muni Also Makes Life Better for Drivers By Andrea Buffa Photo credit: We Ride Australia If you mostly drive to get around San Francisco, you may be wondering, “what has the SFMTA done for me lately?” San Francisco is a “ transit first ” city, so at the SFMTA we focus our resources on making it easier for San Franciscans to get around by public transit as well as by biking, walking and personal mobility device. While it may seem like adding transit lanes and protected bike lanes doesn’t have anything to do with driving, in fact, it does.  Since San Francisco doesn’t have room to give more space to roads, we have to change the way we use the limited space on our existing streets. (Not that adding more roads reduces traffic anyway – check out this article .) City Traffic Engineer Ricardo Oleo puts it this way: “When you have a city like San Francisco that was built with density in mind, having everyone drive is not a viable option. There’s not enough room to have th...

Public Artwork Unveiled Inside New Station in Yerba Buena

Public Artwork Unveiled Inside New Station in Yerba Buena By Enrique Aguilar Have you had a chance to explore the Central Subway's new stations? Special weekend service is Saturdays and Sundays, from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. midnight, through the end of the year. Ride the trains and be mesmerized by beautiful artwork at each new station.  Muni customers will encounter public art when using the four new Central Subway stations to reach their destinations. The art was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission and funded by the City’s Art Enrichment Ordinance, which allocates 2% of the total eligible costs of public works projects for public art. Public art helps draw out the identity of a space, aids in understanding a neighborhood's historical or cultural significance, and builds a connection between the visitor and surrounding community.  The Yerba Buena/Moscone Station includes artwork by Catherine Wagner, Leslie Shows and Roxy Paine. The installations can be found on th...

Muni Service Changes Starting June 13

Muni Service Changes Starting June 13 By Mariana Maguire Beginning Saturday, June 13, the SFMTA will increase Muni service and frequency, add select routes into service and extend some current routes to continue to support essential trips. A key goal of these service increases is to support the community’s economic recovery by providing more connections to neighborhood commercial districts as businesses begin to reopen. We are also adding more frequent service on targeted routes to help address crowding and improve onboard physical distancing. These service changes will improve transit access through Chinatown, SoMa and the Excelsior neighborhoods, identified by the Muni’s Service Equity Strategy as neighborhoods that rely on transit service the most based on the percentage of households with low incomes, private vehicle ownership and race and ethnicity demographics. Although Muni continues to be for essential trips only, many people have no choice but to use transit to r...

Safer and Easier Parking in Every City-Owned Facility

Safer and Easier Parking in Every City-Owned Facility By Pamela Johnson Parking at any of our 22 city-owned facilities is now easier and safer than ever. Late last month we completed the Parking Access Revenue and Control Systems (PARCS) project. This four-year effort replaced aging parking equipment with modern technology and significant operational upgrades. Customer using new PARCS kiosk at North Beach parking garage Patrons will notice enhanced lighting, new wayfinding signs, audible alarms, cameras, gate arms, and payment machines with two-way digital intercoms . Behind the scenes is an all-new parking management system and 24/7 command center, connected to every machine. Can’t find your ticket to pay for parking?  No worries! Thanks to license plate recognition technology, cameras located at every facility’s entrance capture patrons’ plate numbers as they arrive . If a customer loses her ticket, the manager is able to re-issue a ticket based on her license plate...

How Muni is Tackling the 10 Worst Delay Hot Spots Across SF

How Muni is Tackling the 10 Worst Delay Hot Spots Across SF By Cassie Halls The SFMTA has had its fair share of ribbon-cutting ceremonies  over the last two years. These celebrations draw attention to some of our biggest projects. Also attention-worthy are some of the more incremental efforts happening at the agency. One such effort led by the Muni Forward team is the Transit Delay Hot Spots Program , launched in February 2020 . Muni Forward is known for corridor projects such as the L Taraval Improvement Project , 16 th Street Improvement Project , and M Oceanview Transit and Safety Project . These efforts are increasing the already sizeable 80 miles of transit reliability upgrades since 2014. There are also other ways we’re working to slash travel times and improve reliability across the Muni network. The Transit Delay Hot Spots Program aims to tackle the 10 worst “delay hot spots” each year, where buses crawl between stops at four miles an hour or less. We’re looking cl...

With Memorial Day Around the Corner Muni is Still for Essential Trips

With Memorial Day Around the Corner Muni is Still for Essential Trips By Erin McMillan With Memorial Day weekend right around the corner, many of us are eager to get outside and enjoy the sunshine and wide open spaces. But as we enter the biggest holiday weekend since the shelter-in-place order, it’s still important to be acutely aware of how our individual actions can and will affect our communal ability to address the impacts of COVID-19. While we hopefully will arrive at a new normal soon, the shelter-in-place order is still in effect and it’s still important as ever that we remember to physically distance ourselves while out in our neighborhoods and to only make essential trips.   In early April, we temporarily reduced Muni service to our Core Service network which serves the highest ridership lines and supports essential trips to places like hospitals, healthcare facilities, grocery stores, restaurants and other essential services. Thanks to increasing staffing availabili...

SFMTA Supports San Francisco Small Businesses Through Construction and COVID-19

SFMTA Supports San Francisco Small Businesses Through Construction and COVID-19 By Sophia Scherr Local small businesses are what give San Francisco its eclectic and unique charm. Running a small business in San Francisco isn’t an easy feat either, especially over the past year. Therefore, it’s imperative that SFMTA’s projects not only provide resources to businesses that are impacted by construction but are also responsive to COVID-19 concerns as well. Through our partnership with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD), we have been able to provide an additional layer of support to businesses along project corridors including the Geary Rapid Project , Van Ness Improvement Project and L Taraval Improvement Project .  The SFMTA project teams have made it a standard practice to include dedicated support as part of every major capital project. OEWD staff undertake door-to-door outreach and provide information and assistance with grant applications and other city re...