A New Orleans physician provided the skulls of the 19 people to a German researcher engaged phrenological studies — the debunked belief that a person’s skull could determine innate racial characteristics.
NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans celebrated the return and burial of the remains of 19 African American people whose skulls had been sent to Germany for racist research practices in the 19th century.
On Saturday, a multifaith memorial service including a jazz funeral, one of the city’s most distinct traditions, paid tribute to the humanity of those coming home to their final resting place at the Hurricane Katrina Memorial.
“We ironically know these 19 because of the horrific thing that happened to them after their death, the desecration of their bodies,” said Monique Guillory, president of Dillard University, a historically Black private liberal arts college, which spearheaded the receipt of the remains on behalf of the city. “This is actually an opportunity for us to recognize and commemorate the humanity of all of these individuals who would have been denied, you know, such a respectful send-off and final burial.”
The 19 people are all believed to have passed away from natural causes between 1871 and 1872 at Charity Hospital, which served people of all races and classes in New Orleans during the height of white supremacist oppression in the 1800s. The hospital shuttered following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The remains sat in 19 wooden boxes in the university’s chapel during a service Saturday that also included music from the Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective.
The remains of 19 African Americans whose remains were wrongfully taken from New Orleans in the late 1800s and sent to the University of Leipzig in Germany for racially-biased scientific research.Jacob Cochran / Dillard University
A New Orleans physician provided the skulls of the 19 people to a German researcher engaged phrenological studies — the debunked belief that a person’s skull could determine innate racial characteristics.
“All kinds of experiments were done on Black bodies living and dead,” said Eva Baham, a historian who led Dillard University’s efforts to repatriate the individuals’ remains. “People who had no agency over themselves.”
JSN
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