The 1921 massacre occurred when a white mob descended on Greenwood, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Tulsa, the violence erupting after a 19-year-old Black male was arrested for allegedly assaulting a 17-year-old white female in an office building.
A search for the graves of massacre victims began in 2020 and resumed last year with nearly three dozen coffins recovered that contained the remains of possible victims.
Fourteen sets of the remains were sent to Intermountain Forensics in Salt Lake City, Utah, in an attempt to identify them with two sets having enough DNA recovered to begin sequencing.
Scientists plan to conduct soil testing at two sites along the Arkansas River where victims of the massacre were believed to have been buried in mass graves.
The collection of additional DNA is an effort to provide enough to begin sequencing on the other remains.
None of the remains recovered thus far are confirmed as victims of the massacre in which more than 1,000 homes were burned, hundreds were looted and the thriving business district known as Black Wall Street was destroyed.
Historians who have studied the event estimate the death toll to be between 75 and 300.
Victims were never compensated, however a pending lawsuit seeks reparations for the three remaining known survivors of the violence.
