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Tulsa to spend $1 million in honor of Emmett Till: Here’s where the money is going

A display at the National Civil Rights Museum in downtown Memphis, Tenn. with a racist quote from the murderer of Emmett Till is seen.
Adam Jones
/
Wikimedia Commons
A display at the National Civil Rights Museum in downtown Memphis, Tenn. with a racist quote from the murderer of Emmett Till is seen.

Tulsa is looking to use more than $1 million from the federal government earmarked for solving racially motivated cold cases. The city says it’s putting the funds toward education.

Tulsa was awarded the money through the U.S Department of Justice’s Emmett Till Cold Case program.

Till was a 14-year-old boy murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman.

One recipient is the Greenwood Cultural Center, which is receiving about $170,000. GCC plans to host exhibits about survivors and descendants of the 1921 Race Massacre.

“When people visit the Greenwood Cultural Center and the Greenwood District, they’re often looking for information about their family,” said Michelle Burdex, program coordinator at GCC.

Burdex said the Cultural Center will be issuing requests for proposals from potential exhibit designers.

“We’ve definitely seen an increase in people visiting the Cultural Center to learn more,” she said, emphasizing the heightened awareness of the 1921 Massacre after it’s 100th anniversary.

A permanent installation is on track for September 2025 along with a traveling exhibit that can be showcased at libraries and other community spaces.

In addition to exhibits, GCC plans to partner with Intermountain Forensics to host genealogy workshops for the public.

“If members of the community wanted to research their family tree, their ties to the Tulsa Race Massacre, that they have a starting spot to do that,” said Alison Wilde, director of investigative genetic genealogy at Intermountain.

Intermountain, which is receiving about $340,000 of the grant money, is also the lab conducting forensics for the city’s exhumations of massacre victims at Oaklawn Cemetery.

In addition to workshops, the lab will also be training the Tulsa Police Department on identifying remains through forensics.

“It’s important that the Tulsa Police Department understands how genetic genealogy can be used to identify unknown burials or unknown human remains,” Wilde said.

The Emmett Till grant program is specifically aimed at cold case resolution efforts.

According to a police department spokesperson, TPD doesn’t currently have any cold cases confirmed to have been motivated by race, something other cities have used the same grant money to continue to investigate.

Police said they do have “six unsolved homicides of minority victims with unknown motives.”

A city spokesperson said the rest of the grant, about $600,000 will go directly to fund staffing and community outreach.

Ben Abrams is a news reporter and All Things Considered host for KWGS.
Check out all of Ben's links and contact info here.