Ogden man identified as Tulsa Massacre victim 103 years after his death
Jul 12, 2024, 4:30 PM | Updated: 5:58 pm
OGDEN — In a historic finding announced in Tulsa Friday, an Ogden man has now been identified as the first victim of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre identified using DNA testing. That testing was done here in Utah.
The Tulsa Race Massacre is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in US history.
On June 1, 1921, the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, an affluent community known as “Black Wall Street”, was burned to the ground by a group of white Tulsa rioters. An estimated dozens to hundreds of black people were killed. Most were buried in unmarked graves.
Officials in Tulsa have been working on a project called the 1921 Graves Investigation, in an effort to exhume remains and match DNA and genealogy testing to track down victims and relatives of the deadly massacre.
Now, the family of a man who was living in Ogden has learned where his remains have been, 103 years later.
“We’ve identified the first 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Victim since we began our search for them five years ago,” announced an emotional Mayor of Tulsa, G.T. Bynum.
The man’s name was C.L. Daniel officials say he was a Black man in his early 20s.
Who was C.L. Daniel?
“Identifying Mr. Daniel’s remains has been, candidly, an emotionally powerful experience for every person on our team,” Bynum said.
Researchers have learned that in 1921 Daniel was an injured WWI Army vet living in Ogden to try and find work, desperate to get back to his family in Georgia.
“In February 1921, he was residing in Ogden and looking for work in order to move back to Georgia, where his mother lived. We’re not sure how he happened to be in Tulsa when Greenwood was destroyed,” Karra Porter, CEO of Intermountain Forensics, said.
Porter said that IMF researchers found a letter that Daniel wrote from Ogden on February 25, 1921.
“While in route to Georgia from Ogden, Utah, which is only 45 minutes from the DNA lab that would eventually sequence his DNA, and bring us here, he stopped in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” Alison Wilde, the director of forensic investigative genetic genealogy with Intermountain Forensics, said.
Her team is leading research for the 1921 Graves Project for the city of Tulsa.
Through the DNA, from the remains known only until now as Burial 3, they started searching for relatives in geology databases like GEDmatch.com and FamilyTreeDNA.com.
“It’s consumers and people that have taken DNA tests and placed it there unknowingly,” Wilde said.
After webbing thousands of family trees and calling relatives for further DNA samples, Wilde said that the DNA reference testers led them clearly to a set of brothers.
The letter that cracked the case
From there, more genetic genealogy testing ultimately led to making a records request to the National Archives, and a silver bullet finding — a letter from Daniel’s family attorney written to the U.S. Veteran’s Administration on behalf of Daniel’s mother, Amanda.
The letter was asking for Daniel’s survivor benefits and noted that he had been killed in a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921.
“When I read that letter, as a parent, I can’t help but think about his mom. Mrs. Daniel, who knew her brave son had been killed but never knew what became of his remains,” Bynum said.
And while researchers say it’s most likely the remains belong to Daniel, he was reportedly one of seven brothers. He didn’t have any children or a spouse.
“While this victim is likely that of C.L. Daniel, DNA from Burial 3 is consistent with C.L. or one of his brothers (due to the amount of DNA shared among siblings). Regardless of C.L.’s connection to Burial 3, he is confirmed to be a Tulsa Race Massacre victim due to the documentation found this week. Work is ongoing to determine whether any of his siblings were also connected to Tulsa or the Tulsa Race Massacre,” a release states.
Now, the Daniels family and other families tied to the race-fueled two-day massacre are getting some long-awaited closure.
“This is one family. One family who gets to give a member of their family that they lost a proper burial, after not knowing where they were for over a century,” Bynum said. “We know we have at least 17 more people to find in this cemetery.”
Researchers are urging people to continue submitting DNA samples to genealogy websites because it’s always possible they could help with identification.