An FGCU professor and two graduate students were heading to Tulsa on the 100th anniversary of one of the worst chapters of racial violence in U.S. history.
Heather Walsh-Haney, a Florida Gulf Coast University associate professor, and students Cahjanae Henfield and Leslie Urgelles will continue work at an excavation site where human remains were unearthed last fall from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.
Walsh-Haney, chair of FGCU s Department of Justice Studies, participated in the dig in October with FGCU grad student Sonya Concepcion Jones. They joined other human excavators who found at least 11 bodies in coffins in an unmarked mass grave in a Tulsa cemetery.
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FGCU researchers learn from the dead at forensics lab
By Annie Hubbell
LAND O’ LAKES, Fla. – There are certain memories we can’t forget. They’re triggered by random things – a smell takes you back to your grandmother’s house on Christmas morning or the way the clouds darken the sky on a random afternoon transports you back to the day your mother died. Sometimes we collectively remember where we were at a certain moment – like the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the space shuttle Challenger exploded, or terrorists attacked the World Trade Center.
Austin Polonitza (’10, Criminal Forensic Studies; ’16, MS, Criminal Forensic Studies) digs a shovel test pit to reveal soil types.