From Eectronic Telegraph
Mass graves hold the secrets of
American race massacre
By James Langton in New York
1921 Tulsa race riot -
Homestead Press
Black Wallstreet -
Davey D
INVESTIGATORS are searching for
the graves of up to 400
black Americans in an attempt to
end the 78-year cover-up
of one of the worst acts of mass
slaughter in the country's
history.
Dr Clyde Snow, the world's leading
authority in forensic
anthropology, is preparing to
spend the coming months in
his home state of Oklahoma,
identifying the remains of
hundreds of men, women and
children believed buried in
communal graves.
The dead are the long-missing
casualties of the Tulsa race
riot in 1921, a little-known
chapter in American history
which, if substantiated, would
eclipse even the 1995
Oklahoma bombing as the country's
worst civilian atrocity.
Using accounts from newly
discovered witnesses and
sophisticated ground-penetrating
radar, a team of
historians and scientists believes
that the death toll from the
massacre could have been as high
as 400.
Dr Snow, 71, has uncovered the
bones of Josef Mengele, the
Auschwitz "Angel of Death", in
Brazil and the victims of
atrocities in every continent from
Argentina to Ethiopia and
Bosnia. "I was used to seeing such
things in Bosnia or
Africa," he said. "But this is so
close to home. It is important
to remember these things can
happen in your own
backyard."
The Tulsa riot has been largely
forgotten for more than
seven decades, not least because
of a campaign by the local
authorities to cover up the full
extent of the killing in its
immediate aftermath.
Dozens of official documents are
missing, believed destroyed
in the cover-up. Most
controversially, a headline and
editorial from the Tulsa Tribune
that called for whites to
"lynch a negro tonight", which is
widely believed to have
sparked the slaughter, have been
removed from every
surviving archive edition. A
reward is now being offered for
a copy of the original newspaper.
New evidence uncovered in the past
months backs long-held
views among black survivors of the
riot that the number of
victims was far higher than the
official report of between 36
and 100. One 88-year-old man,
Clyde Eddy, has come
forward to say that he saw boxes
of dead blacks being
buried secretly in crates in
unmarked graves at a city
cemetery. Four other possible
sites of mass graves are also to
be investigated.
The violence followed the arrest
of Dick Rowland, a black
shoeshine boy on May 31, 1921.
Newspaper reports wrongly
claimed that he had sexually
assaulted a 17-year-old white
girl in the lift of the office
block where they both worked.
Later, gangs of blacks and whites
clashed outside the
county courthouse where he was
being held. In the violence
that followed, gangs of
heavily-armed whites poured in to
town. More than 30 city blocks
were levelled, many of them
in a thriving commercial district
known as "Black Wall
Street".
Some 10,000 blacks were left
homeless and more than 1,000
houses burnt to the ground. Order
was re-established only a
day later when National Guardsmen
entered Tulsa,
detaining at least 4,000 blacks in
impromptu prison camps.
An official commission of inquiry
was first proposed after
the 75th anniversary of the
rioting in 1996. The 11-man
panel of experts voted earlier
this month to establish a
"historical record" of the riot
and to expand the search for
bodies.
The prime mover of the
investigation, a black Oklahoma
senator, Don Ross, says there has
been "a conspiracy of
silence for 75 years. Some people
have worked very hard to
keep this hidden".
Despite the passage of time,
investigators believe they have
found at least 40 witnesses to the
violence, the eldest of
whom was a 16-year-old girl at the
time. One eyewitness
report speaks of piles of bodies
stacked in lorries "like
firewood".
The search for human remains will
concentrate on five
possible sites for mass graves,
including land near the
Arkansas river and what is now a
local park. Most of the
dead were buried without ceremony
- partly because they
constituted a serious health
hazard in the early summer
heat.
Dick Warner, a commission
investigator, says: "We are not
trying to set any blame, just to
find out what really
happened." If the remains of a
large number of women and
children are found, says Dr Snow,
then "what we have here
is a form of ethnic cleansing".
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