A partially disabled World War I veteran trying to get home to his mother has been identified as a 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre victim buried anonymously in the city’s Oaklawn Cemetery, researchers and Mayor G.T. Bynum said Friday.
C.L. Daniel, a Georgia native whose name had never before come to the attention of race massacre researchers, is the first person identified through a project launched five years ago by Bynum to find unmarked burials from the May 31-June 1 calamity in which more than 35 square blocks of Tulsa’s Black Greenwood District were destroyed by whites and dozens and perhaps hundreds of people were killed.
DNA comparisons, genealogical research and two letters in the National Archives led Intermountain Forensics, a firm working with the city, to Daniel. The DNA and genealogy narrowed the search to two brothers with that last name.
One of the letters, a 1936 missive from a Georgia attorney to the U.S. Veterans Administration on behalf of Daniel’s mother, identified Daniel as almost certainly the occupant of what archeologists denote as Burial #3 in the old Black paupers’ section of Oaklawn.
The letter, from Stanford Arnold of Newnan, Georgia, on behalf of Amanda Daniel, seeks “any benefits that be due her” because of her son’s service and honorable discharge because of injury.
“She has no discharge (papers) and is going to have difficulty in establishing his death,” Arnold wrote. “C.L. was killed in a race riot in Tulsa Oklahoma in 1921 according to best information she has furnished me.”
It is unclear whether the VA responded or if Amanda Daniel, whom the lawyer described as “in destitute circumstances,” received any assistance.
The National Archives search also produced a letter written by C.L. Daniel, apparently to the Army, in February 1921 from Ogden, Utah. In poignant language, Daniel said his legs pained him, apparently from an injury suffered in the Army, and made finding work difficult. Daniel says he spent 19 days in the Camp Gordon, Georgia, hospital.
“(F)or some time I have traveled this country over and now sufriend (suffering) with complance (complaints) that (I) was in the base hospitle (hospital) with,” Daniel wrote, his spelling and grammar a testament to the sort of education many Americans and especially Black Americans received in the early 20th century. “(D)ear sir, please send me a nof (enough) money to git me a job and to eat with till I Get better.”
Daniel’s burial place was among the first uncovered in 2020 by the team headed by state archeologist Kary Stackelbeck and University of Florida forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield. Its proximity to the headstones of two known massacre victims, Reuben Everett and Eddie Lockard, and to an area in which other remains were similarly buried, make the researchers reasonably certain they have found the “original 18” — 18 Black massacre victims reported at the time to have been buried in Oaklawn Cemetery but without information about their exact location — and two sets of remains with signs of gunshot wounds.
Stubblefield said a cause of death could not be determined for Daniel, whose remains were exhumed in 2021 and later reinterred in the same grave. She said it appeared that the body had been scrunched into a coffin too small for him.
Bynum indicated that Daniel’s family, whose members were not identified, have not decided how they want to proceed with final burial.
“We’re going to work with them every step of the way,” Bynum said. “Whatever they decide to do with the remains, the city of Tulsa is fully supportive of that.”
Daniel’s identification accounts for one of several of the Original 18 listed on death certificates as “unknown.” It also has reinvigorated the project.
At Friday’s press conference, Bynum said the archeological team will return to Oaklawn on July 22. Stackelbeck indicated that this phase will last more than a week and will concentrate on the Original 18 area.
“We now feel doubly confident of the criteria we’ve been using to know which ones are good candidates for exhumation,” she said.
Danny Hellwig, director of Intermountain’s Laboratory Development, said Daniel’s identification is really the first of its kind.
“This hasn’t really been done before,” Hellwig said. “We’ve been learning through the process. As we’ve learned and adapted, we’re getting better at it. … We hope this will provide some confidence and context and maybe a lot more trust so that we can expand on this.”
Identification relies on voluntarily submitted DNA, public databases and families’ willingness to answer questions about relatives or ancestors.
In Daniel’s case, researchers said, extended family members were mostly unaware of the circumstances of his death, if they knew of him at all. Intermountain’s Alison Wilde, who handles the genealogical side, said many living family members did not know each other, much less the story of a great uncle who died without direct descendants more than a century ago.
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Source: www.dailyprogress.com