A five-year-old effort to identify victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre who were buried at Oaklawn Cemetery has returned the first name: CL Daniel, who was in his 20s. Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum on Friday said the WWI veteran's remains were identified using DNA from his six brothers' descendants. Alison Wilde, the genealogy case manager for the 1921 Graves Investigation, says they were able to zoom in on a set of brothers using DNA and then began requesting records of their lives, reports CNN. That led to a 1936 letter found in the National Archives.
A news release calls it "the most convincing piece of evidence tying him to the Tulsa Race Massacre." The letter was written by the Daniel's family attorney to the Veterans Administration on behalf of his mother requesting her son's veteran's benefits. The letter states, "CL was killed in a race riot in Tulsa Oklahoma in 1921," per the release. Further records showed Daniel was drafted into the Army in 1918 and honorably discharged in December 1919. Another letter penned by Daniel in February 1921 shows he was in Utah and trying to return to his mother in Georgia; it does not mention Tulsa. Officials theorize he ended up in Tulsa during that attempt to make it home.
Forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield tells the AP Daniel's remains were fragmented and a cause of death could not be determined. "We didn't see any sign of gunshot wounds, but if the bullet doesn't hit bone or isn't retained within the body, how would we detect it?" The discovery is the first to reveal the name of a Tulsa Race Massacre victim outside of those identified in the Oklahoma Commission's 2001 Report on the two-day massacre, which saw a white mob kill as many as 300 Black people.
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As the New York Times explains, records show only 26 death certificates issued in 1921 relate to the May 31 to June 1 massacre. With the true death toll unknown and many victims unnamed, the city started excavating a portion of Oaklawn where a mass gravesite had been found. A fourth excavation at Oaklawn is set to start later in July. (More Tulsa Race Massacre stories.)
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