Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

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Finding Unity in History: Our Community Process Recovering Victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Phoebe R. Stubblefield, Director of the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory, University of Florida

On June 1,1921, the unincorporated community of Greenwood Oklahoma was systematically looted and burned by a white mob.  The conflict derived from an attempt by the mob to lynch a young African American man, Dick Rowland, who had been accused of assaulting a white woman. Thirty-nine deaths were documented by death certificates, but the actual number of deaths is unknown due to the period of martial law which ended the rioting, poor documentation, and focus on recovery.  Twenty African American adult males were buried in the Tulsa city cemetery, Oaklawn, in unmarked graves.  In 2020 former mayor GT Bynum initiated the investigation, which continues today, to recover these and any other victims of the race massacre and return them to their families.  Our team of anthropologists have recovered over 50 individuals from unmarked graves in Oaklawn, and forensic analysis has identified six with gunshot wounds that make them potential victims of the riot.  Collaboration with our historians,  geneticists, and genealogists resulted in the Read more