Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, right, announces the first identified victim of the 1921 Race Massacre during a news conference Friday, flanked by State Archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck, from left, anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield and Race Massacre descendant Brenda Nails Alford.
Mike Simons, Tulsa World
Researchers and burial oversight committee member Brenda Alford carry the first set of remains exhumed from a dig site Sept. 13, 2023, in Oaklawn Cemetery to an onsite lab for further examination in Tulsa, Okla.
Mike Simons, Tulsa World
Crews work at Oaklawn Cemetery during an excavation Oct. 27, 2022, while searching for bodies from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Tulsa, Okla.
A partially disabled World War I veteran trying to get home to his mother has been identified as a 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre victim buried anonymously in the city’s Oaklawn Cemetery, researchers and Mayor G.T. Bynum said Friday.
C.L. Daniel, a Georgia native whose name had never before come to the attention of race massacre researchers, is the first person identified through a project launched five years ago by Bynum to find unmarked burials from the May 31-June 1 calamity in which more than 35 square blocks of Tulsa’s Black Greenwood District were destroyed by whites and dozens and perhaps hundreds of people were killed.
DNA comparisons, genealogical research and two letters in the National Archives led Intermountain Forensics, a firm working with the city, to Daniel. The DNA and genealogy narrowed the search to two brothers with that last name.
One of the letters, a 1936 missive from a Georgia attorney to the U.S. Veterans Administration on behalf of Daniel’s mother, identified Daniel as almost certainly the occupant of what archeologists denote as Burial #3 in the old Black paupers’ section of Oaklawn.
The letter, from Stanford Arnold of Newnan, Georgia, on behalf of Amanda Daniel, seeks “any benefits that be due her” because of her son’s service and honorable discharge because of injury.
“She has no discharge (papers) and is going to have difficulty in establishing his death,” Arnold wrote. “C.L. was killed in a race riot in Tulsa Oklahoma in 1921 according to best information she has furnished me.”
It is unclear whether the VA responded or if Amanda Daniel, whom the lawyer described as “in destitute circumstances,” received any assistance.
The National Archives search also produced a letter written by C.L. Daniel, apparently to the Army, in February 1921 from Ogden, Utah. In poignant language, Daniel said his legs pained him, apparently from an injury suffered in the Army, and made finding work difficult. Daniel says he spent 19 days in the Camp Gordon, Georgia, hospital.
“(F)or some time I have traveled this country over and now sufriend (suffering) with complance (complaints) that (I) was in the base hospitle (hospital) with,” Daniel wrote, his spelling and grammar a testament to the sort of education many Americans and especially Black Americans received in the early 20th century. “(D)ear sir, please send me a nof (enough) money to git me a job and to eat with till I Get better.”
Daniel’s burial place was among the first uncovered in 2020 by the team headed by state archeologist Kary Stackelbeck and University of Florida forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield. Its proximity to the headstones of two known massacre victims, Reuben Everett and Eddie Lockard, and to an area in which other remains were similarly buried, make the researchers reasonably certain they have found the “original 18” — 18 Black massacre victims reported at the time to have been buried in Oaklawn Cemetery but without information about their exact location — and two sets of remains with signs of gunshot wounds.
Stubblefield said a cause of death could not be determined for Daniel, whose remains were exhumed in 2021 and later reinterred in the same grave. She said it appeared that the body had been scrunched into a coffin too small for him.
Bynum indicated that Daniel’s family, whose members were not identified, have not decided how they want to proceed with final burial.
“We’re going to work with them every step of the way,” Bynum said. “Whatever they decide to do with the remains, the city of Tulsa is fully supportive of that.”
Daniel’s identification accounts for one of several of the Original 18 listed on death certificates as “unknown.” It also has reinvigorated the project.
At Friday’s press conference, Bynum said the archeological team will return to Oaklawn on July 22. Stackelbeck indicated that this phase will last more than a week and will concentrate on the Original 18 area.
“We now feel doubly confident of the criteria we’ve been using to know which ones are good candidates for exhumation,” she said.
Danny Hellwig, director of Intermountain’s Laboratory Development, said Daniel’s identification is really the first of its kind.
“This hasn’t really been done before,” Hellwig said. “We’ve been learning through the process. As we’ve learned and adapted, we’re getting better at it. … We hope this will provide some confidence and context and maybe a lot more trust so that we can expand on this.”
Identification relies on voluntarily submitted DNA, public databases and families’ willingness to answer questions about relatives or ancestors.
In Daniel’s case, researchers said, extended family members were mostly unaware of the circumstances of his death, if they knew of him at all. Intermountain’s Alison Wilde, who handles the genealogical side, said many living family members did not know each other, much less the story of a great uncle who died without direct descendants more than a century ago.
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Tulsa Race Massacre: This is what happened in Tulsa in 1921
In 1921, white mobs invaded Greenwood and burned it down
A growing but divided city had tensions rising. How World War I influenced residents.
Key figures in 1921
Greenwood was defined by freedom and opportunity
An encounter on an elevator and concerns about a lynching
Tulsa Tribune article cited for sparking massacre
Dick Rowland's life threatened while jailed as crowd gathers outside
Tulsans take up arms and there are issues with special deputies
Fighting begins in Greenwood and the neighborhood is soon overrun
Mobs won't let firefighters douse the flames
Airplanes flew over Greenwood as it was attacked
National Guard called in, denies report that machine guns were used to kill dozens
Dr. A.C. Jackson was killed as he tried to surrender in his front yard
Death toll remains unknown; search for graves continues today
Black Tulsans were marched through the streets and detained at camps throughout city
Red Cross reports the massive devastation in Greenwood
Key locations in Tulsa during the 1921 Race Massacre
Mount Zion Baptist Church was burned down but, like Greenwood, persevered and rebuilt
Tulsa Race Massacre: Quotes from survivors, officials and others
Tulsa Race Massacre: Recommended reading
Tulsa Race Massacre / The Tulsa World Library
Tulsa Race Massacre: Was 1921 the first aerial assault on U.S. soil?
"The first time Americans were terrorized by an aerial assault was not Pearl Harbor," a CBS News story says leading up to coverage this weekend of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
"Scott Pelley reports on a race massacre in which an estimated 300 people, mostly African American men, women and children, were killed, and aircraft were used to drop incendiary devices on a black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Greenwood Massacre of 1921 has been largely ignored by history, but Pelley finds a Tulsa community seeking to shed more light on what's been called the worst race massacre in history," a preview reads for a "60 Minutes" story airing 6 p.m. Sunday on CBS.
Context for viewers: Six airplanes circled the Greenwood area during the morning hours of June 1.
What they were doing, and why there were so many, has long been a matter of passionate debate. Many people believe they were used to shoot at people on the ground and bomb Greenwood.
Officials said the small craft, generally thought to be two-seat, single-engine Curtis “Jenny” biplanes, were merely keeping track of activities on the ground and relaying the information through written messages dropped in weighted metal cylinders attached to streamers.
To what extent this explanation was initially challenged is unclear, but in October 1921 the Chicago Defender published a story in which it said Greenwood had been bombed under orders of “prominent city officials.”
The story cited a Van B. Hurley, who the newspaper said had given a signed statement to Elisha Scott, a Kansas attorney.
Scott filed dozens of lawsuits on behalf of victims but doesn’t seem to have ever entered the Hurley affidavit into the record. There is no record of a Van B. Hurley living in Tulsa around the time of the massacre or that anyone by that name ever belonged to the Tulsa police force.
But that doesn’t mean the story did not have substance. Many people believed city officials were behind the burning of Greenwood, and the explanation that the squadron of planes was only used for surveillance struck some as suspiciously thin.
Certainly the planes had a great psychological impact on many. For example, Mary Jones Parrish wrote about them in her account, as did prominent attorney B.C. Franklin in his.
The Defender story said the planes dropped “nitroglycerin on buildings, setting them afire.”
But nitroglycerin is an explosive, not an incendiary. It is also highly unstable and dangerous.
That has caused some to speculate that something like Molotov cocktails might have been used, or “turpentine balls” — rags soaked in flammable liquid and wrapped around the head of a stick.
There are several practical reasons why trying to light and throw incendiary devices from an open cockpit airplane of that era would seem a difficult, dangerous and even foolish idea.
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, right, announces the first identified victim of the 1921 Race Massacre during a news conference Friday, flanked by State Archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck, from left, anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield and Race Massacre descendant Brenda Nails Alford.
Researchers and burial oversight committee member Brenda Alford carry the first set of remains exhumed from a dig site Sept. 13, 2023, in Oaklawn Cemetery to an onsite lab for further examination in Tulsa, Okla.
City workers, community members and researchers pray during a small ceremony as remains, including those of C.L. Daniel, are reinterred at Oaklawn Cemetery on July 30, 2021, in Tulsa.
Forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield hugs Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum after a news conference Friday announcing that a victim of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was identified after being exhumed from Oaklawn Cemetery. The remains of C.L. Daniel were exhumed in 2021, and his family has been notified. At right is Burial Oversight Committee Chair Brenda Alford.
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum holds up a letter during a Friday news conference announcing that a victim of the Tulsa Race Massacre was identified after being exhumed from Oaklawn Cemetery.
Researchers, city of Tulsa workers and community members carry human remains to an onsite forensic laboratory while exhuming bodies from an unmarked grave at Oaklawn Cemetery in Tulsa on June 23, 2021. The graves were exhumed as part of the search for victims from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.