Greenwood and the graves of 1921

An active, ongoing mass-grave search that began in 2020

In 1921 a white mob destroyed Greenwood, the Black district of Tulsa known as Black Wall Street, burning 35 blocks, leaving thousands homeless and killing an estimated 75 to 300 people. Aircraft were used. For most of a century it was left out of Oklahoma’s schoolbooks, and the dead were never accounted for. Search for the mass graves began in earnest in 2020: excavation at Oaklawn Cemetery found burials, and identification work through DNA is ongoing. This is on the map because it is a real, physical search for people who were hidden, and because leaving it off would be its own kind of erasure.