Story

Storyteller: Black History Saturdays

For generations, oral histories in Greenwood told us the truth: many of the people murdered during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre were buried in mass graves…and the largest of which was located beneath an oak tree in Oaklawn Cemetery.

That story led us here.

Beneath an old oak tree standing alone in the cemetery—surrounded by previously unmarked and unknown ancestors—we found them. Exactly where the community said they would be.

Since 2020, excavations in this area of Oaklawn Cemetery have recovered 77 men, women, and children from this mass grave. Ancestors whose lives were taken, hidden, and denied recognition for decades.

The oak tree that once stood here bore witness. It guarded them when no one else knew they were there. Though the City has since removed the tree to expand the search, Greenwood remembers it as a Black Heritage Tree—a protector, a marker, a keeper of truth.

Even in its absence, it’s spirit is felt and we are grateful to be able to memorialize this tree and many others lost into our Global Black Heritage Tree Map even though they are no longer part of our living landscape. We remember their stories.