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Bethany Mollenkof

Photographer Bethany Mollenkof found out she was pregnant three months before COVID-19 shut down swaths of the United States. She began to document her own experiences during quarantine in Los Angeles—from her first ultrasound, which her husband had to watch from the parking lot over FaceTime, to childbirth. Although Mollenkof had hoped for a natural birth, she decided to deliver in a hospital in case of complications—which proved the right choice. After her water broke, her contractions did not start, and ultimately labor was induced to keep the baby safe. “I thought about my friends, my community, and what it would feel like to become new parents in isolation—to not have people around us to help, people who years later could tell our daughter that they’d held her when she was a few days old,” Mollenkof wrote in a photo essay for National Geographic. “But I also thought about women throughout history, women who have survived wars, pandemics, miscarriages. Their resilience guided me.”

On the campus of Oklahoma State University, a mural commemorating the Tulsa race massacre stands as a visible reminder of a history that was smothered and contested for much of the past century.

Children in Tulsa raise their fists during a march commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. During the two-day rampage in 1921, white rioters killed as many as 300 Black residents and destroyed an affluent business community known as Black Wall Street.

Phoebe Stubblefield seen in the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida in February. Dr. Stubblefield is part of the team of researchers and scientists excavating human remains at Oaklawn Cemetery in an effort to identify the Black victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Robert Turner prays near the site of a newly discovered mass grave in Tulsa’s Oaklawn Cemetery, the first found from the 1921 attack by white rioters on Greenwood, a Black neighborhood. Turner is pastor at Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was heavily damaged in the rampage.

High school senior Brandi Ishem poses in front of a mural celebrating Black Wall Street, as Greenwood came to be known. Painted in 2018, the art- work adorns a support wall for Interstate 244, which now cuts through Greenwood, splitting it in two. The mural, a reminder of what’s possible, is a popular spot for senior portraits.

Journalist J. Kavin Ross has deep ties to Tulsa. His great-grandfather lost a juke joint in the riot, and his father introduced the legislation launching Oklahoma’s first official investigation into the massacre. Ross has long urged the city to hunt for mass graves.

Injured survivors filled the beds in Tulsa’s temporary Red Cross hospital. “While the records show 763 wounded,” the relief agency reported, “this does not include wounded people afterwards found on practically all roads leading out of Tulsa.” Phoebe Stubblefield’s great-aunt lost her home in the attack. Now the forensic anthropologist (above) will help identify the remains of victims found in mass graves.

Vanessa Hall-Harper sits at a booth in Wanda J’s Next Generation, a soul food restaurant in the historic Greenwood district. As the city councillor representing the area that includes part of Greenwood, Hall-Harper made sure that there would be community oversight of the mass-grave investigation.

Nearly 100 years later, survivors and descendants—including Ellouise Price-Cochrane, whose father’s cousin was Dick Rowland, the accused teen—filed a lawsuit seeking reparations from the city. 