Excavations that began this week in the U.S. city of Tulsa have uncovered human remains that may belong to victims of one of the worst racial massacres in the country's history, research officials said.
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Committed in 1921 by white rioters, the Tulsa massacre killed up to 300 residents of a black neighborhood in this city of Oklahoma.
These remains were found in Oaklawn Municipal Cemetery in Tulsa, near an unmarked grave about a meter deep.
They have yet to be analyzed and it is still too early to say that this is a victim of the massacre, said Kary Stackelbeck, archaeologist from the state of Oklahoma at a press conference.
Other remains, which may belong to a second victim, were exhumed elsewhere in the cemetery.
“
The fact that we can find human remains that are potentially recoverable is really a positive thing
,” said Kary Stackelbeck.
“
We have a better understanding of the topography and the depth to which we can expect to find such remains in the future,
” she added.
The municipality of Tulsa decided in 2018 to try to locate the victims of the massacre as part of a memory effort.
The first excavations were carried out in July in another area of the cemetery in search of mass graves, without success.
300 dead
The Tulsa massacre left up to 300 people killed (including women and children) among the black population and destroyed more than 1,200 buildings in the black neighborhood of Greenwood, nicknamed "
Black Wall Street
" at the time because of its unprecedented prosperity. .
The precise number of deaths remains unknown.
Many bodies were thrown into the river, burned or buried in anonymous graves.
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According to the official report of a commission of inquiry organized in 2001, the local authorities themselves armed some of the white rioters, appointing them for the occasion "
deputies
" of the police.
No one has ever been convicted of this violence.
Testimonies show black businesses looted and then burned, family homes deliberately riddled with bullets, and even planes dropping incendiary bombs on this black neighborhood, scenes long ignored by the general public but brought to light last year thanks to
HBO's
"
Watchmen
" TV series.
