Announcement on Burials Investigation and 1921 Race Massacre

… Present regulations. She is in destitute circumstances. She had a son, C. L. Daniel, who served in the army during the late war. She has no discharge and is going to have difficulty in establishing his death. C. L. was killed in a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 according to the best information that she has furnished to me, and it goes on.

(00:29)
Today because of the efforts of so many people, I can stand before you to announce that we’ve identified the first 1921 Tulsa race massacre victim since we began our search for them 5 years ago. C. L. Daniel was a veteran who served our country in World War I, who was killed in the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and whose family did not know where he had been buried for the last 103 years, until this week.

(01:11)
When I read that letter as a parent, I can’t help but think about his mom, Mrs. Daniel, who knew her brave son had been killed, but never knew what became of his remains. Identifying Mr. Daniel’s remains has been, candidly, an emotionally powerful experience for every person on our team. It makes every challenging day of this search worth it, but it’s also important in the larger context of this search. His remains show no signs of gunshot wounds. They were identified purely due to the expertise of our team of experts and give us hope that other remains found in similar circumstances could be those of other victims. We also have documented evidence that there are at least 17 other victims buried in Oaklawn Cemetery. So this identification affirms our need to continue this search with the knowledge that identification and reunification is possible.

(02:28)
I want express as their elected spokesperson Tulsa’s profound gratitude to everyone who brought us to this day, from the local historians and leaders who developed the 2001 State Commission Report to our team of experts who are pouring their hearts and minds into this search today. I want to thank my colleagues on the Tulsa City Council and the citizens of Tulsa for continuing to fund search. There have been many times, as I’ve said, where it felt like we were searching for a needle in a pile of needles, but today I hope that this generation of Tulsans can appreciate that you’ve helped this family find their relative after he was missing for 103 years. Now, I’ll turn it over to Alison Wilde with Intermountain Forensics, who’s going to share more details on how we got here today. Thank you.

Thank you. I’m going to provide some details about how our team came to connect Burial 3 with Mr. C. L. Daniel and also give a little more context to his life. I want to emphasize that although you see one genealogist standing here today, I represent the entire team, which consists of not only Intermountain Forensics, but our dedicated partners who are professional genealogists from the organizations, the DNA Doe Project, DNA Detectives, Identifinders International and Moxxy Forensics. Thousands of hours have been spent on the genealogy work to date, not just for this burial, but for all.

(04:17)
As a team, we also realize we’re only able to do our work because of the dedication of so many other organizations and individuals over the last 100 years that have brought us to this point. The goals of the 1921 Graves Investigation are to find and identify the victims of the Tulsa race massacre. I was confident that genetic genealogy could provide identifications, but today we know that the efforts of the community, the anthropology team, the archeology team, they found the victims. As genealogists, our daily work centers around families and communities, and we have continually been humbled by the Greenwood and Tulsa race massacre descendant communities as they protect the history of and serve as the guardians of the unknown victims of the Tulsa race massacre.

(05:04)
Today, the family members of Mr. C. L. Daniel join those communities. I’m confident his next of kin who we’ve worked with and the memory of their loved one are in good hands. The community’s dedication and the work of the city’s 1921 Graves Investigation has led to an added chapter in the story of the events of 1921. To make the connection between Burial 3 and Mr. Daniel, our work begins by comparing the DNA profiles in the GEDMatch and the family tree databases, which consists of everyday family history hobbyists, its consumers and people that have taken DNA tests and placed it there. Unknowingly, they have contributed so much to this research. We then reach out to some of those individuals. We build the trees of many of those matching DNA relatives, and we start our work to say where and how might Burial 3 fit into this web of families.

(06:15)
You know early on, we published a long list of surnames that were related to Burial 3 and tied to the county of Coweta, Georgia. I think I’ve been saying that wrong for a very long time, and the families were very interrelated. It took a lot of time and effort to untangle those families, a lot of contact with descendants of families of interest, who willingly shared their stories, their DNA where comfortable, and their time. The relatives or the people that we contacted who didn’t share DNA, you helped, you helped us. The people who took a chance and answered the phone call of a stranger who wanted to talk about your family history. You helped us. And we want to thank them. It was only through those additional DNA comparisons that we were able to narrow our focus down to a set of brothers and begin requesting records of their lives, which led to the records from the national archive that the mayor just discussed.

(07:28)
I’d like to read a small portion of the life narrative created by the Burial 3 team leader, Janelle Daniels, that she created for the family and the next of kin. C. L. “Daniel, born in Newnan, Georgia was one of seven sons born to Thomas and Amanda Merriweather Daniel. After the early death of their father, the Daniel family faced significant challenges. Their mother, Amanda became a widow by 1910 and worked tirelessly to provide for her sons. Despite the hardships, the Daniel family together persevered and records show that by 1920, Amanda proudly owned their home, a testament to their hard work and resilience.” I think it’s only fitting that Amanda, this strong woman, our genealogy team came to know and love so well is the reason that we’re here today. It’s her efforts, her perseverance that led to the documentation that was able to give us the answers that we were searching for.

(08:29)
” C. L. Daniel served his country during World War I. He was stationed at Camp Gordon. During his service there, he spent 19 days in the base hospital. He was honorably discharged, having served with dedication for 9 months and 16 days. In 1919, C. L. embarked on a journey across the United States displaying an adventurous spirit and a longing to explore the country. In a heartfelt letter to the Army requesting veteran benefits, he expressed his commitment to the war effort and his ongoing struggle with the injuries he sustained. He sought assistance to secure employment and sustenance, hoping to return home to his beloved mother in Newnan, Georgia.” That was in February of 1921.

(09:13)
“Tragically C. L.’s journey was cut short. Sometime while en route to Georgia from Ogden, Utah, which is only 45 minutes from the DNA lab that would eventually sequence his DNA and bring us here, he stopped in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And it was there, he became a victim of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. The research into C. L. Daniel and another missing brother is ongoing and will hopefully bring additional details of their lives and the story of the Tulsa race massacre to this community. Also, ongoing, of course, is our research on the other burials in the genealogy phase. We encourage everyone to read the surnames and locations of interests that are posted on

… the city of Tulsa’s website. If you recognize an ancestor’s surname or family location, please contact the genealogy team. Use the “Provide information” button on our website, which is tulsa1921dna.org, or you can email the genealogy team directly at idteam@tulsa1921dna.org. If you’ve taken a consumer DNA test, such as AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe, you could be very useful to our project. We don’t compare the burial profiles in those databases. We need you to take an extra step and upload that information to GEDMatch or Family Tree DNA, and then you will be directly compared to the burials in this project and may have a hand in guiding us toward the next identification.

(10:51)
Last, I want to thank the next of kin of Burial 3, who shared their stories, families, and their DNA with our team. This is a beginning of a new phase of the 1921 graves investigation, in which they will play a prominent part. We realize this news has come as a shock to them. The city has pledged their support to the family members, and we look forward to connecting them to the Greenwood and Tulsa Race Massacre descendant communities, as we know that they will do the same.

(11:22)
I’d like now to turn over to Ms. Brenda Alford, a representative of the descendant community.

Thank you.

Good morning. This is an awesome day, a day that has taken forever to come to fruition, and I have to share with you, just to be honest, that when I heard this news, it brought tears to my eyes. I’m going to try to hold it in right now, but this is absolutely awesome.

(11:57)
Today I am thinking of the families and the community members who lost loved ones that they did not get to memorialize in the ways that they would want to do it. I just also think about the awesome experience it has been for me to have the opportunity to work along these awesome people to help find the graves and the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre. I am so very humbled and honored to stand here today to witness this time in history and this historic moment as it is.

(12:38)
I want to again thank Mayor G.T. Bynum for allowing these processes to move forward after so, so many years. And to our awesome team members, who have put so much work into these processes to bring us to this final situation and this day, I just want to give them a hand, I tell you. Please help me.

(13:07)
And finally, I’d like to pay homage to our dear late chair, Mr. Kavin Ross, who did so much to find the history and share the history of our community, to make sure that we never forget what happened on Greenwood and Black Wall Street. We all know, standing here, that he would be so very, very proud, and we are honored to carry on the legacies. Thank you.

I really want to thank Ms. Alford, who’s been just a tremendous leader on this every step of the way. You see her here at these press conferences, but she’s out at every time, out in the field helping the team. As you can see, I’m going to avoid looking at my friends over here, I think we’re all choked up about this. And this is one family. This is one family who gets to give a member of their family that they lost a proper burial after not knowing where they were for over a century.

(14:28)
We know we have at least 17 more people to find in this cemetery, and it is so important that we keep that work going. So I also want to use this to announce, starting the week of July 22nd, our team of experts will be right back out there in Oaklawn, continuing the excavation and analysis and work that goes into finding these victims, and as Allison mentioned, gives the DNA team and the genealogical team the resources and the material they need to try and find these families out there. So we will be back at it again. I want to thank my colleagues on the council who just adopted a budget couple weeks ago that will fund this phase of the search.

(15:27)
We are hopeful, and I want to reiterate Allison’s point a moment ago, that there are other families out there that maybe didn’t know about this search yet, or were hesitant because they didn’t know if it would really lead to being connected with their family member that they’ve lost, and now can see from this that it is possible to find them. You can go to cityoftulsa.org/1921graves, and everything that we have from the city is on that site. From the very beginning of this search to today, all the material that you need to learn about it or to participate in it is all right there, and we hope that you will.

(16:12)
Again, our thoughts today are with Mr. Daniel’s family, who, we’re emotional about this, I can’t imagine how it is for them, after so much time being reunited with his remains and finally finding out where he’s been. We’re thinking of them, and we’re going to work with them every step of the way. Whatever they decide they want to do, moving forward, with his remains, the city of Tulsa is fully supportive of that as his next of kin, and we’ll continue this search until we find everybody that we can. I would love to answer any questions that you have.

We are streaming live. If you have a question, please raise your hand. We’ll come around with the microphone.

Well, what an exciting update after six years. Thank you for all this information. I’m wondering if you guys could share any details on how you may have authenticated this letter. Is there an original copy out there, and what steps did you take to be sure that this letter was authentic?

That’s a great question. We received the letter directly from the National Archives. We have done no work to authenticate it. When I contacted the city of Tulsa, I think there was a decision making point, and I can’t speak to their decision making point, but clearly there’s a decision to be made. Do we continue to research in private before releasing any information, or is information released to the community as soon as possible? And you can see the decision that was made. So our research is ongoing. We have a lot. We’ve already started reaching out and doing more, but a letter like that, a document like that that comes out of the National Archive is too important to sit on.

Brady-

Well, could I…

Yeah.

Before we get… I think it’s important, this letter didn’t just fall out of the sky. It was located by Allison after finding, tracking down to the mother, right?

Yes, yes. In case I wasn’t clear in my first comments, the DNA reference testers and the research that we had done led us clearly to a set of brothers. In researching all those brothers, there were record requests and other attempts carried out by our team to get more information. Some of the information had already come back and was not fruitful. This particular information was delivered to us this week, and as you saw, was very fruitful.

Brady?

And we, of course, will be providing that document and others that… We are really fortunate that the federal bureaucracy sits on all that paperwork and collects it over the years, because it’s been crucial in this, and we’ll provide that to all of you as well.

So did I understand that you also found a letter from February of 1921? And if so, does that letter specifically say he’s going to Tulsa, or it says he’s going to Utah and [inaudible 00:19:36] figured he must have got off the train here and something happened?

The information all came from the same records requests. There were several documents in that, the Veterans Administration and the War Risk Insurance Department were documenting requests for assistance. They had received a letter from him from Ogden, Utah that was dated February 1921,

… 1921 that stated he was seeking assistance and that his intended goal was to travel back to Newnan, Georgia to be with his mother. There was no mention made of Tulsa. Yeah, no mention made of Tulsa. We can only assume that in his efforts to travel to her, he went through Tulsa, as we know he was here.

Okay. Rick.

I’ve got two questions. One of them is kind of a clarification. On some of these documents, they say C.L. Daniel or one of his siblings. You are now confident it is C.L. Daniel and not a brother?

In terms of the DNA analysis, because C.L. didn’t have any direct descendants, the brothers that had direct descendants, we had already been in the process of DNA reference testing. And so we know because of that, that they bear the appropriate relationship to C.L., but it also could be one of his brothers. Unless you can compare your DNA directly to yourself or one of your descendants, when you get to the point of great nieces and nephews, they would all share the same amount of DNA with any of the brothers. So C.L. Is the only brother that we have any context to place in Tulsa. So we can say it’s definitely… We can say two things. C.L. Daniel was a victim of the Tulsa race, Massacre according to his own mother, and the burial three is consistent with the DNA we would expect to see in C.L. Daniel or one of his brothers. As I mentioned, there is another brother that we’re still researching that is also missing. We have no context to say for sure that he was ever in Tulsa or in Oklahoma.

(21:57)
We will look for that. We’ve speculated as a team that, what if the other brother was here as well? And what if the other brother is one of the burials that we have not been able to bring to the genealogy phase yet? I know for sure none of the other burials are his brother because we compare the burials directly to each other, and they’re unrelated as of yet. But we will continue researching.

The second question is, and it’s about some of the word, especially on this map here, it says plot three. That is y’all’s word, plot. There was no… They didn’t bury him gently in a designated area. Is that still what… He was dumped there. Is that still what happened?

Dr. Stubblefield?

Yeah.

If you could, Phoebe, say your name.

Oh, sorry, I’m Dr. Stubblefield. Oh, am I too high, or low? I’m short. I’m Dr. Stubblefield from the University of Florida, the lead forensic anthropologist on our investigation. And to address your question about the plot three, Oaklawn Cemetery, even to the white and colored potter’s field, and we’re digging in the colored potter’s field area… Those are his actual names. I’m not hearkening to annoying terms. The cemetery was plotted to the burial. They had space allocations per burial. And so when we say plot three is really burial three, our third burial that we encountered, so not the city’s. Okay.

Question. Gary Lee from the Oklahoma Eagle. Really two questions. One is that I noted in the notes, and I think that the mayor said that the cause of death was not really clear, but I wonder if anything in the forensics indicated anything about any physical altercation that might have taken place on this particular victim.

Okay, so thank you. You’re asking about his cause of death. So his remains were very fragmentary. That’s a general theme of the remains coming from that portion of the cemetery. So by fragmentary, I mean before you move them, you might see that a bone is there and intact, and then once you move it to take it to the laboratory, it’s in multiple pieces. And it has to do with just time and pressure, and some parts of him were in better shape than others. So he was in good enough shape for us to determine his skeletal age, that he was a young man. I’m not sure he even made 25. But as far as damage trauma, I’ve even reviewed since then, the images we had for his legs. I’ve looked at the notes in your… He complained about leg pain. His disability was general debility in that packet in the information we have.

(24:57)
So we’ve seen multiple individuals in the cemetery who have pathological conditions involving their legs. I didn’t detect that for burial three, Mr. Daniel, but he was not well-preserved. So he was too young for arthritic changes, and we didn’t see any sign. We X-ray every set of remains, and 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? So no, for every burial… And this in and of itself is one of our triumphs, that he is ID’d despite that we could only hold him as a not excluded, as a not excluded individual from being a victim, and now we know he is a victim. It’s just… Yeah, I’m still flabbergasted because I only saw the information a few days ago when Allison found it, and it’s just… I got to stop thinking about it. Okay.

The second question is the obviously a very painstaking process that were used in, the processes that were used in this particular case, will they be helpful going forward in examining the other cases out there, or is every case different?

Well, they are helpful because we now have a better grasp of how well-preserved the individual should be for that section of the cemetery. My colleague, Dr. Stackelbeck, could speak to this better, but there are challenges to that location because the city long ago had filled in a streambed to create more land to bury individuals in, and water still travels through there. So depending on the burial, sometimes it’s better, worse. And keep in mind we’re also looking for individuals who had been burned, and so we don’t yet know how that will add to the preservation. But knowing now what it looks like, what a level of preservation looks like for that time period, 1921, yes, it does help. And I have no doubt that we’ll find more of them just based on his aspect and his buried aspect, his posture.

Can I add to that a little bit, just [inaudible 00:27:31]? Because I think this…

Please introduce yourself.

I’m Dr. Kary Stackelbeck. I’m the state archeologist of Oklahoma and also the lead archeologist on our team. But what I would also add is context is so critically important. And so in this particular case, so I think you all have maps that have been provided, so it’s not just about finding this one individual, it’s finding him in relation to the other individuals that we have been examining in this part of the cemetery. He is in proximity to burial 27, who was our first gunshot victim that we identified. We haven’t identified him in terms of his name, but the first gunshot victim that we located, also not terribly far off from burial 42, who was another gunshot victim proximity to the headstones for Ruben Everett and Eddie Lockhart. So that’s really important and tells us that we’re in the right vicinity.

(28:29)
But also what’s important is the context of his burial specifically, the fact that he was buried in a simple wooden casket and that the casket itself was too small for his remains. He was forced to fit into this casket. His stature was such that they didn’t construct a casket to suit him and his specific size, which is typically the case of normal honorific when you’re burying an individual, even if you’re constructing the casket. And it’s not one that’s commercially made and bought from elsewhere. So they forced him into a casket that was too small for his stature. They had to bend his legs somewhat at the knee in order to get him to fit. His head and his feet both touched either end of the casket. Again, that just speaks to the fact that he was made to fit into a casket that was not really made for him.

(29:19)
And so that’s something that is one of the characteristics that we do see among some of our other burials that we have exhumed, but have not yet yielded indications of trauma, that we still consider to be, to Phoebe’s phrasing, not yet excluded. So we know that there are other individuals that are potential candidates who meet some of those same criteria that we continue to be interested in. Those individuals continue to be investigated by the IMF team for their genetic profile and hopefully will yield similar results. So I think when we hear the word first, we hope he’s not the last. We hope that Mr. Daniel is not the last, and we are confident. No pressure IMF,

But we are confident that there will be others yet to be found as long as we have appropriate and good participation from other members of the public.

I have one thing if you don’t mind.

Please introduce yourself.

I’m Danny Hellwig, the Director of Laboratory Development at Intermountain Forensics on the lab side. And there’s a really good question that’s asked there because you have to realize that this really hasn’t ever been done before. So all of this was based on a lot of really good science and amazing team and a lot of hope. But we’ve been learning through the process, and as we have learned and adapted and adjusted, we are getting better at it. So this is definitely something where we have the experience now on the next one and the one after that.

(30:54)
And the second part of this, and Allison can allude to this, is community involvement. We have to thank the city of Tulsa, the community as a whole for embracing us and just letting some strangers into your life to help this investigation. We hope this provides some confidence and context and maybe a lot more trust that we can expand upon this. It’s just going to get… The process is going to get easier for us. Mind you, it is extraordinarily difficult, but easier is better. And the more we have learned and adjusted, the better the next one will be. The community help is essential and we appreciate it.

Time for two more questions. One right here.

This question is for anyone and everyone involved in contacting the next kin that was involved. I know that it says that the city’s not identifying them at the moment, but can you go into any detail regarding the process to contact them and then what information they were providing or what kind of reactions were when you presented them with information regarding their genealogy connected to Mr. Daniel?

Yes. The genealogy team has been in contact with some of the next of kin before even knowing that they were next of kin. They were part of a list of a lot of people that we wanted to contact and get hopefully a DNA reference comparison from their family line to help us narrow in.

(32:37)
The record collections and the DNA reference tests all started coming back at the same time. That’s why we were in a position to have some of the DNA reference tests already when this record was delivered to us this week. So in contact with them, our team has already been in contact with them. We realize now we have placed their family in a position where they’re not residents of Tulsa or Oklahoma.

(33:07)
They live in other states. We’ve brought this project not to their doorstep, but into their lives, into their hearts, and when it was time to share with them the news, which happened all very quickly, this has all been just this week, when it was time to actually give them the direct news that it was their great uncle that was burial three and that was going to be a victim of the Tulsa race massacre. The city of Tulsa was involved in that Zoom call we’d already talked about… We’ve had lots of conversations with family members about the family in general. That’s what we’ve been trying to do is collect the stories. What did you hear handed down? Where did people go? Where did people travel? What were their occupations? Can you talk to all your cousins, the older people in your community. Who remembers what? So we’ve already had so many conversations about their families in general with many of them, and I think when we said we would like to schedule a meeting with you in the city of Tulsa, I can’t imagine what they must have thought or felt.

(34:36)
I think it’s shocking news to say the least for the families. I think that one step that still needs to be done, you would think that they would all know each other because they’re next step kin, but they do not know each other. They’re distantly related enough because of the passage of time that that introduction is still yet to come. So as a group, we know we’ve brought a lot into their lives and that’s something, as a genealogy team we’ve talked about that, we feel responsibility to ease the transition into what has now been opened for them.

We have time for more question. Rick?

I was looking at Google Earth and comparing it to the map and everything we’ve known over the years. Has there been any discussion of some kind of marker or monument put out there to better honor those who are going to be identified or may not even ever be identified, but knowing what you know has happened out there?

No, that is absolutely something that our team at the city has talked through as far as moving ahead. Especially we have remains that have not been identified, but reinterred. How do we properly mark those? Because whether or not they’re a Tulsa race massacre victim, they are still important to somebody, and we want to make sure that they’re properly honored. So we’ve had those discussions. As it relates specifically to Mr. Daniel, though, that we just want to support whatever his family wants to do in that regard.

(36:19)
And I think Allison’s point is so well made if try to put yourself in their shoes to have found this out this week and to have an ancestor that they did not know what happened to them for the last century plus. And my message to them is just, we are here to support you and whatever we can do as a city to be of help as you decide what you want to do with his remains and to give him that proper burial that is so important for a family, we are here to support that.

(36:55)
I really appreciate you all coming out today helping spread the word about this investigation. We hope this will lead to more people participating in this search. And again, I just cannot say how grateful our city is for these folks who have… You’re looking at a whole chain of this investigation, and so many folks who aren’t even with us anymore, who were part of developing that state report that really brought to light that these graves existed in the first place. All of them are standing with us today and their work made this possible. Thank you very much.

(37:39)
Great job. That was fantastic.