And so, I'm interested in markers like signs of violence or any kind of- ballistic injuries or chop injuries. Scott Pelley: So, just because you find a burial site, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's from the massacre. Determining cause of death will be complicated, because of that period's Spanish flu pandemic We have to dig.Īn excavation in October, led by University of Florida forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield, revealed a mass grave with, at least, 12 individuals. Scott Pelley: And there's only one way to find out? That's always the thing I have to remind myself. Bynum: Of course there's any number of things it could be. You just see disturbances and contrasts which is why you can't really say necessarily that for sure it's a common grave. Scott Pelley: So we're not seeing, in these images, human remains?

Never in any of the schools was anything ever said about it. The murder of a Black man at the hands of police is, today, shouted into the national memory.īut in 1921, it remained possible to erase a genocide.Ĭongregant: I grew up attending segregated Tulsa public schools. And that's the same basement that we have today. But the following Sunday after the massacre, they came and worshipped in our basement. Robert Turner: I don't know how they did it. 6,000 of them were herded into internment camps and then released weeks later. Survivors included 10,000 now homeless African Americans. The number of dead is estimated between 150 and 300. Ultimately, one hospital did make space in its basement for Black casualties. Those who bled to death included Greenwood's most prominent surgeon. When the Black hospital burned, White hospitals refused to take Greenwood's wounded. And before they destroyed it, they looted. Robert Turner: 36-odd square blocks, city blocks, were destroyed. A photo was crudely and imperfectly, hand-lettered, at the time, 'running the Negro out of Tulsa.' A photo was crudely and imperfectly, hand-lettered, at the time, 'running the Negro out of Tulsa.' Reverend Robert Turner's Vernon AME Church was among at least five churches burned, along with 1,200 homes. Robert Turner: The first time in American history that airplanes were used to terrorize America was not in 9/11, was not at Pearl Harbor, it was right here in the Greenwood District. And these are from turpentine balls, burning turpentine balls dropped from planes. Franklin: And he hears planes circling and sees roofs of buildings catching fire. National Guard troops pressed the attack against what one guard officer called 'the enemy.' Quotes from eyewitnesses include, 'old women and men, children were running and screaming everywhere.' A deputy sheriff reported a Black man dragged behind a car, 'his head was being bashed in, the deputy said, bouncing on the steel rails and bricks.' But what happened next may have frightened Buck Franklin even more. This is a city of wealth and order, and governance. Franklin: Where's the fire department? Where's the police when we need them? We're part of a city. From a high grain elevator, a machine gun laid fire on Greenwood Avenue. What began as an attempted lynching at the jail erupted into a massacre. He describes a woman who's trying to find her child who's run in front of her, and she's unafraid of the bullets raining down, because her concern is to find her child. Franklin: He too was traumatized by seeing people being shot in front of his eyes. 'On they rushed, whooping to the tops of their voices, firing their guns every step they took.' What is it like for you to read those words today?

Scott Pelley: One of the moments during the riot that your grandfather wrote about was this. And, in a running gun battle, the mob chased the Black vets to Greenwood. Black veterans of World War I arrived to shield the defendant for his day in court. At the jail, a lynch mob demanded the prisoner. Tulsa's White newspapers told of a Black teenager who allegedly attacked a White female elevator operator. And the newspapers are saying, read all about it. There's this Black man who's been caught with this White woman in the elevator. Franklin: He hears that there's to be possibly a lynching. But on the day after Memorial Day, 1921, Buck Franklin awoke to fearful news. Washington named Greenwood 'Negro Wall Street.' Because the district was lined with Black-owned shops, restaurants, two newspapers, a 54-room grand hotel, a hospital and the Dreamland Theater, which would soon boast air conditioning. Franklinīuck Colbert Franklin was a lawyer who chased his dream to a promised land. And he's the first person in the family to go to college, Buck Colbert Franklin. Franklin: And my grandfather moves here from Rentiesville in February 1921.

Makemkv segment map last black man