Tulsa is resuming work to find the mass graves dug during its 1921 race massacre

• The city of Tulsa has announced it will resume work next Monday at a test site marking a possible mass grave from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.
• White people, who targeted an area known as "Black Wall Street," killed up to 300 Black Americans in the massacre, the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum estimated.
• A 2019 scan had found an anomaly in the ground consistent with a mass grave, but work at the site stopped in March 2020 due to the coronavirus.
• Work will now recommence as part of a campaign aimed at "providing healing and justice to our community," the city's mayor said in a statement.

Excavators will resume work looking for mass graves resulting from the Tulsa race massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in US history.

The work, which was paused in March due to the coronavirus outbreak, had zeroed in on a section of Tulsa's Oaklawn Cemetery, where a geophysical scan in December 2019 found anomalies consistent with a mass grave.

It will resume work next Monday, July 13.

The site is considered to be a possible resting place of the hundreds of Black Americans killed by white mobs in 1921, who targeted the Greenwood district, which had come to be known as "Black Wall Street" for its concentration of successful Black-owned businesses.

"As a city, we are committed to exploring what happened in 1921 through a collective and transparent process — filling gaps in our city's history and providing healing and justice to our community," Mayor GT Bynum of Tulsa said in a statement.

According to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, as many as 300 Black Americans are thought to have died in the attacks, in which white crowds looted and burned the district.

Tensions were inflamed after a news report of an encounter between a white woman and a Black man in an elevator, accounts of which vary, according to the museum.

The incident left Greenwood in ruins and injured 800 people, according to the museum.

The site of the test dig was found by forensic scientists who spent weeks investigating three possible sites, according to The Washington Post. The Oaklawn Cemetery and an area known as "The Canes" were flagged as possibilities, the paper reported.

The cemetery will be closed for the three-day test dig, which is being conducted with the University of Oklahoma's Oklahoma Archaeological Survey.

It is part of a wider feasibility study to assess whether or not there are human remains at the site and to inform future research, the city's statement said.

The city also plans to display video footage and photos of the work in progress.

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