Scientists attempting to identify the remains of possible 1921 Tulsa Massacre victims will extract additional DNA from recently reburied remains this fall, the team told the project’s Public Oversight Committee on Tuesday.
The remains that were discovered in Oaklawn Cemetery last year will be exhumed again for more DNA samples in an effort to establish enough DNA to allow sequencing on the remains, the team told the committee in a report.
“We are already making preparations,” forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield told the committee. “We don’t have a date, but we hope to be there this fall.”
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Two sets of remains of 14 sent to Intermountain Forensics in Salt Lake City, Utah, provided sufficient material for sequencing, while 12 others did not, according to the Tulsa World. Sequencing for the two samples is expected to begin within weeks, according to the lab. Scientists are hoping the sequencing will help tie the remains to living descendants.
The remains will then be reburied at the cemetery, according to the report by Stubblefield and archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck.
The team said it also plans to conduct soil testing at two sites on the Arkansas River, where massacre victims are believed to be buried in mass graves. Historians estimate the death toll from the massacre to be between 75 and 300, but only 36 were recorded at the time.
The 1921 massacre occurred in an affluent black neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, called Greenwood, when a white mob stormed the neighborhood and burned down more than 1,000 homes, raided hundreds of others, and destroyed local businesses.
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The three remaining survivors of the violence, Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis, and Lessie Benningfield, have never received any compensation for the massacre. However, a lawsuit seeking unspecified punitive damages is pending.
If approved, the suit will provide reparations to the survivors and the living descendants of other victims.
