CNN
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CL Daniel was serving in the United States Army at Camp Gordon, Georgia, during World War I when he was seriously wounded in the leg and was honorably discharged in 1919.

As a new veteran, Daniel went to Ogden, Utah, to help build railroad tracks, his family believes. However, he soon became desperate to access his federal government disability benefits so he could afford to move back home to his mother in Newnan, Georgia.

Daniel, who was black, expressed his needs in a letter dated February 25, 1921 to the U.S. War Department.

“Dear sir, please send me some money to find me a job and to eat until I get better, send it now, I ask that I find it far from home me and send me a copy of my report to inform these people that I have a mother in the town of Newnan, in the State of Georgia…” the letter reads.

It is unclear whether Daniel ever received these benefits.

But on his way to Georgia, Daniel, for reasons unknown, stopped in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a a racial massacre would break outsaid his family. During the violence that took place over two days – May 31 and June 1, 1921 – a white mob destroyed a wealthy black community. As much as 300 people were killed.

Daniel, aged in his 20s, was among those killed in the attack. Tulsa race massacresaid his family.

More than 100 years later, the city of Tulsa honored Daniel at a memorial service last week after his remains were excavated in a mass grave investigation at Oaklawn Cemetery in Tulsa.

THE investigation aims to identify the remains in certain anonymous graves and to determine whether they are remains of victims of the racial massacre. Daniel, who investigates All right was victim of massacre, is first person identified of 46 people exhumed since city inaugurated cemetery in 2020, state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said.

The circumstances of Daniel’s death are unknown, Stackelbeck said. His remains showed no signs of gunshot wounds, she said.

Stackelbeck said experts used forensic and DNA analysis of Daniel’s remains to link him to his family members.

“This is a very old and closed case, and so (we’re) just looking at it from the perspective of these people deserve to be found and reunited with their families,” Stackelbeck said. “Their descendants deserve to know where they are and what happened to them. And they deserve better respect than how they were treated in life.

Five of Daniel’s descendants traveled to Tulsa for the memorial service.

The memorial honored Daniel and other unidentified people who were exhumed during the investigation. A special monument has been erected at the cemetery and headstones will be installed at each burial.

“It was bittersweet to learn that one of our loved ones was involved in the massacre,” said Andrew Poythress, Daniel’s great-grandnephew. “But it’s also nice to know that he’s been identified and that he’s not just a number or a body just buried in a field.” It actually has a name. He was a real person and that’s the joy.

Stacy Daniel Brown, Daniel’s great-niece, said she had mixed emotions when the city called her earlier this year to tell her they had confirmed the DNA match.

“It’s hard to even express those feelings to be honest with you,” Brown said. “To know that at such a young age he had been taken from our great-great-grandmother who was the mother of seven sons who she raised alone.”

Brown credited Daniel’s mother, Amanda Daniel — and the letters she wrote to the government seeking answers about his death and the location of his body — for helping researchers connect the veteran to his family a century later.

The city linked CL Daniel to the massacre, in part, through a letter written by an attorney on behalf of Amanda Daniel to the U.S. Veterans Administration in 1936 regarding her son’s survivor benefits.

The letter, found in the National Archivesstates that “CL was killed in a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921.”

“She was a very resilient woman,” Poythress said of Amanda Daniel.

Brown said discovering the town also helped some of CL Daniel’s descendants, including herself, meet relatives for the first time. They now have weekly Zoom calls and discuss family reunion plans.

The family also plans to purchase land in a cemetery in Newnan, Georgia, and bury Daniel’s remains near his mother.

“Black people have not been treated fairly in this country,” Poythress said. “Telling our stories and what we’ve brought to this country…so now we have the opportunity to tell our story, and we just want it to be told properly. »