Nueva Orleans – New Orleans celebrated the return and burial of the remains of 19 African -American people whose skulls had been sent to Germany by racist research practices in the 19th century.
On Saturday, a multifah commemorative service that includes a jazz funeral, one of the most different traditions of the city, paid tribute to humanity from those who return to its final resting place in the Hurricane Katrina Memorial.
“Ironically, we know these 19 due to how horrible they happened after their death, the desecration of their bodies,” said Monique Guillory, president of the University of Dillard, a historically black university of private liberal arts, which headed the reception of the remains in the name of the city. “This is actually an opportunity for us to recognize and commemorate the humanity of all these people who would have been denied, you know, such a respectful farewell and the final burial.”
It is believed that the 19 people died from natural causes between 1871 and 1872 at the Charity Hospital, which served people from all races and classes in New Orleans during the apogee of white supremacist oppression in the 19th century. The hospital closed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The remains sat in 19 wooden boxes in the University’s chapel during a service on Saturday that also included music from the Kumbuka African battery and dance collective.
A New Orleans doctor provided the skulls of the 19 people to a German researcher involved frantological studies: the discredited belief that a person’s skull could determine the innate racial characteristics.
“All kinds of experiments were carried out in lived and dead black bodies,” said Eva Baham, a historian who directed the efforts of the University of Dillard to repatriate the remains of people. “People who had no agency on themselves.”
In 2023, Leipzig University in Germany approached New Orleans City to find a way to return the remains, Guillory said. The University of Leipzig did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
“It is a demonstration of our own morality here in New Orleans and in Leipzig with the teachers there they wanted to do something to restore the dignity of these people,” Baham said.
Dillard University researchers say there is more excavation to do, even to try to locate possible descendants. They believe that some of the people have been recently released from slavery.
“These were very poor and homeless people at the end of the 19th century, but … they had names, they had directions, they walked through the streets of the city we love,” Guillory said. “We all deserve recognition of our humanity and the value of our lives.”
