burial, that touched me as a pastor on a visceral level. as a pastor when you bury somebody it s more than just giving a eulogy. when we do what we call the committal which is that ashes to ashes, dust to dust over their poddies, that is our way of spiritually releasing them to go wherever they re going. and to deny that to the people that were dumped or killed during the race massacre, it s evil. it shows you that at that time period people didn t even care
and the legislature and said we ve never had an official study of this little known event. hey, that was inspired by the oklahoma city bombing when they said it was the largest urban disaster in america, wrong. more people were killed than any such disaster, wrong. i was asked to be the historian for commission. during that period i was thinking maybe we could use this to figure out how many people died and where they were buried. how many? go ahead. i am chair of the survivors committee of the oklahoma legislative commission to study the tulsa race riot of 1921. i was the videographer for the race riot commission report. i was on to it accompany eddie faye gates. her job was record the systems testimonies of the riot
state representative don rawls created the commission to study the tulsa race riot of 1921, which brought historians, consultants, from around the world to try to figure out what happened in 1921. i had many conversations with riot survivors. you know, you are sitting there, nice little lady sitting the better. when you are 5 years old. it was one of the proudest moments that i can remember my father, no other major republican mayor or democrat even thought about or touched the story of the mass graves. when you hear about history being erased and, you know, these authoritarian regimes,
at us. we have a responsibility and an obligation to find the truth. the mass graves investigation started out in 97, actually, with don ross, kevin ross father. when he was first told about the massacre, my father he thought it was a lie, it didn t happen. it was not in the history books. but then in high school we heard first-hand from the survivors who are schoolteachers at the time, and that was something that stuck with him until he got to the point he could do something about it. white political leaders tried to bury the truth along with all those black victims of the riot and they pretty much succeeded for 76 years until 1997 when the state legislature appointed a special commission of 11 people to finally uncover the truth about the horrific riot of 1921. don ross went to the governor
so many have said there were no bodies there, but you know all the black folk in the community, we believe they re there. those stories were passed onto us. inch by inch crews are digging into the history of the 1921 tulsa race massacre. tulsa s mayor, initiated the study to find out if there are any black victims in the mass graves. there was a systematic cover up of the event. it should not have taken 99 years. we have to pay attention. we have to pick up the charred baton that has been left in our hands and figure out where the screams are coming from.