OKLAHOMA CITY — A World War I veteran is the first person identified from graves filled with more than a hundred victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre of the city’s Black community, the mayor said Friday. Tulsa Mayor G.T.
Bynum made the announcement Friday along with the genealogist team leader from Intermountain Forensics. 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.
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.
The victim in what became known as "burial 3" is World War I veteran C. L. Daniel of Newnan, Georgia.
He was injured and on his way home to Georgia from Utah when his 1921 stop in Tulsa became fatal, genealogist Alison Wilde said the team learned. Daniel had no direct descendants, but his brothers did, she said. "His connection to the Tulsa Race Massacre was confirmed this week when Intermountain Forensics, the laboratory assisting the City with DNA and genealogical analysis, was able to recover records from the National Archives," a city news release states.
"Contained in the records was the most convincing piece of evidence tying him to the Tulsa Race Massacre — a letter.