Start with breaking news out of Tampa tonight where Macdill Air Force Base confirms it has found more possible graves from a destroyed black cemetery. I'm Courtney Robinson and I'm Frank Wiley and investigates. Emerald Morrow broke this story a little more than an hour ago. Emerald, how many graves are we talking about right now? Frank, this is a huge discovery and we are talking about 121 possible grave that MDA believes is from the Port Tampa cemetery, which was a segregation cemetery that went missing decades ago. I want you to take a look at this video. We took a drive on the Air Force Base today where officials showed us the area of the discoveries and you should be able to see that area on your screen right now. It's an open field and they say over the last couple of years, they have expanded their previous search to cover a larger area using everything from cadaver dogs and ground penetrating radar to make these discoveries. They were making good on a promise that they made to the community to find whatever they could. After they discovered there could be graves at the base. We want to make things right. Obviously, we can't change what has happened in the past, but we want to work and make sure that all of those who have been laid to rest here, get the dignity and respect that they deserve. We made that promise that we were going to look and we're going to keep looking. We're not going to give up until we've made sure that we found everything that we possibly can. And for mcdill, that means that they are not done searching yet. The base does plan to expand its search even further to make sure they are not missing any lost graves. And of course, all of this work builds on what happened a little bit more than four years ago when the Tampa Bay History Center first notified the base that there could be potential grades there. Of course, they did begin a search, but at that time, they only made about 11 possible discoveries. Emerald, you mentioned the Tampa Bay History Center here notifying mcdill in 2019, but we have to give credit where credit is due. You had a lot of information that added to the initial search as well. Yes, absolutely. We were all looking at this federal document. It was called the uh Works Progress Administration. Of course, you may be familiar with those types of depression era documents and it was a veteran's grave registration and it listed a bunch of different cemeteries across the Tampa Bay area, a lot of which many people had never heard of in the Port Town ce cemetery was one of those cemeteries. So yes, we began immediately looking for death certificates, all sorts of things. And I even had a conversation with a woman who was in her nineties who says that she remembers actually seeing an open grave when the base was being constructed around the 19 thirties phenomenal work there. Emerald, thank you. By the way, Emerald has been following the search for erased cemeteries, as she mentioned across the Bay area for years. Now, you can see where hundreds of other graves were found right now on 10 Tampa bay.com/erased.
