The Skulls Of 19 Black Americans Returned To New Orleans After 150 Years

More than 150 years after their heads were taken and sent to Germany for so-called scientific study, the craniums of 19 Black people are finally back in New Orleans and will be honored in a ceremony this Saturday. Dillard University President Monique Guillory described the upcoming memorial as “about confronting a dark chapter in medical and scientific history while choosing a path of justice, honor and remembrance.” The 19 individuals died in the city’s Charity Hospital in 1872 and were subjected to racist research practices that claimed Black people’s brains were smaller, making them inferior. Guillory emphasized, “They were people with names. They were people with stories and histories… They were not specimens, not numbers.”

The heads were returned to New Orleans about a week ago after Leipzig University in Germany initiated contact last year about returning the remains in its possession. Eva Baham, a retired Dillard professor, said this outreach led to the creation of the Cultural Repatriation Committee. “We are not talking about them as if they are skeletal remains,” she said. “We want to honor them by calling them the individuals that they are.” Dillard University has been instrumental in the repatriation process, with Guillory explaining that the university was proud to be part of “this very sensitive acknowledgment of our people.”

The individuals to be laid to rest include Adam Grant, Isaak Bell, Hiram Smith, William Pierson, Henry Williams, John Brown, Hiram Malone, William Roberts, Alice Brown, Prescilla Hatchet, Marie Louise, Mahala, Samuel Prince, John Tolman, Henry Allen, Moses Willis, and Henry Anderson. The names of two others remain unknown. Despite efforts over two years to contact descendants, the committee was unable to find any family members but did learn details about how and when the individuals arrived in New Orleans.

More recently, the remains will be honored in a jazz funeral procession that Guillory says will “show the world that these people mattered.” She added, “We have a very different relationship with death here and a very different relationship with what we believe is the spirit and our ancestors. And now they are home.” The remains will be stored at the Hurricane Katrina Memorial. Guillory concluded, “We want that day to be not only of remembrance but of reckoning and renewal, and may we never forget them.”

Link: NBCNews

Photo Curtesy of Jacob Cochran/Dillard University