A century after a race massacre, Tulsa finally digs for suspected mass graves
Nearly a century after a brutal race massacre left as many as 300 black people dead, this city began to dig Monday for suspected mass graves from the violence.
A team of scientists, archaeologists and forensic anthropologists watched as a backhoe moved dirt from an 8-by-10-foot hole at the city-owned Oaklawn Cemetery, where ground-penetrating radar last year detected anomalies consistent with mass graves.
Several descendants of massacre survivors bore witness to the moment outside the graveyard’s wrought-iron fence, standing in a light rain after the work was briefly delayed by booming thunder and lightning. J. Kavin Ross, whose great-grandfather owned a business that was destroyed in the massacre, said he had waited a long time for this day.
“I’ve waited for this day for over two decades to find out the truth of Tulsa’s public secrets,” said Ross, a photojournalist and teacher in Tulsa who spent years of his own time interviewing survivors of the massacre. “A lot of people knew about it but wouldn’t tell about it.”
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum (R), who ordered the investigation reopened after a Washington Post story detailed the unresolved questions surrounding the violence, told reporters that he once thought it was incredible that there could be mass graves in Tulsa.
“You hear about mass graves in authoritarian regimes,” he said. “You don’t hear about them in the United States and definitely shouldn’t be hearing about them in Tulsa.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/07/13/tulsa-digs-mass-graves-race-massacre-oaklawn-cemetery/
Well, that's the thing. For minorities especially, the United States has been an "authoritarian regime" and continues to be one to this very day.
That's simply a fact.
