January 8, 2025 Monthly Meeting
After the Fire: The Search for Victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
Guest Speaker: Kary Stackelbeck, Ph.D.
Affiliation: Oklahoma Archeological Survey, University of Oklahoma
Abstract: On May 31, 1921, the community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma was set ablaze by an angry white mob. An unknown number of African Americans were killed, though some estimates suggest around 300 individuals fell victim to one of the worst acts of racial violence in our nation’s history. In the days that followed, the bodies of the deceased were removed. Some were buried in Oaklawn Cemetery. Many others were completely unaccounted for. Over 100 years after the Massacre, our interdisciplinary team is working to locate the graves of the victims, reclaim their identities, and restore them to their descendants.
Speaker Bio
Kary Stackelbeck is the State Archaeologist of Oklahoma. She has over 30 years of experience in various archaeological arenas, including research, education and public outreach, site files management, museum collections, advocacy, cultural resource management, and regulatory. Her research experiences have included a wide variety of topics and time periods and taken her throughout Oklahoma and the Southeastern and Midwestern regions of U.S., as well as Peru and the Sultanate of Oman. Among other skills, she has substantial practical experience with burials and cemeteries of different time periods and regions—from excavation and documentation to preservation, management, policy, and descendant advocacy. Since 2019, she has acted as the lead archaeologist in the City’s re-opened investigation to locate graves of victims from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.