UPDATE: Due to the extreme heat, experts stayed late in the evening Thursday to finish the test excavation to avoid the extreme weather Friday.
During the test excavation, team members conducted limited testing in the eastern area adjacent to the original excavation site at Oaklawn Cemetery to help identify the origin of a geophysical anomaly that will help assess where future excavations will be conducted.
Following the test excavation, a summary briefing will be compiled, and the results will be incorporated into a technical report that will be shared in the weeks ahead.
Oaklawn Cemetery will remain closed to the public Friday so crews can remove the heavy equipment.
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Crews working on finding mass graves from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre are moving forward on another step in the process.
The city announced another two-day test excavation at Oaklawn Cemetery this week and it kicks off this Thursday morning.
This excavation isn't about searching for graves like we've been seeing. This time it's about testing the site to find new information that could help researchers determine where to look next.
A release from the city said crews will carefully remove top layers of soil east of the original excavation site at Oaklawn.
The search for possible mass graves from the Tulsa Race Massacre is a story that we've been sharing with you since it all started which was nearly five years.
Oral histories and newspaper articles from after the race massacre indicate that there are victims and possible mass graves in several areas around the city.
So far, there have been two rounds of excavating at Oaklawn Cemetery beginning in 2020.
An Associated Press tally shows crews found 66 sets of remains in those excavations. It's not yet clear whether any of those remains are victims from the Tulsa Race Massacre.
Scientists exhumed many of those remains and took DNA in an effort to make that determination.
27 remains have been exhumed with 22 analyzed for DNA extraction. That information came from the city in April.
"We are here today to announce that the remains of 6 individuals exhumed in our search for race massacre victims have yielded DNA profiles that we can trace to DNA relatives living today," said Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum in April 2023.
The hope is this will eventually bring answers to families who have relatives among the Tulsa Race Massacre victims.
Intermountain forensics is seeking help from anyone who might be associated with the surnames or might have relatives from the race massacre.
"If you want your DNA compared to the unidentified human remains in the project, those tests need to be uploaded or transferred to gedmatch or familytreedna," Alison Wilde, genealogy case manager of the project, said in April 2023.
A full list of surnames are available here.
However, Oaklawn Cemetery isn't the only location suspected to have remains.
There are still three more sites identified for the city's examination: Newblock Park, an additional area near Newblock Park, and Rolling Oaks Memorial Gardens, formerly Booker T. Washington Cemetery.
The city said both Newblock Park and the additional area near it also have strong oral histories indicating they may be potential sites associated with race massacre burials.
As for Oaklawn, the cemetery is closed through the excavation process this week. It begins Thursday at 7 a.m.
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