By Stacy M. Brown, Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
More than 150 years after their crania were taken from New Orleans and shipped to Germany for racist scientific experiments, 19 Black Americans were finally laid to rest. In a moving display of remembrance and restoration, Dillard University, the City of New Orleans, and University Medical Center held a traditional jazz funeral and memorial service to honor the 13 men, four women, and two unidentified individuals whose remains were stolen in the 1870s by a local physician and sent overseas. The ceremony, held on May 31, included student pallbearers, an interfaith service, and a burial at the Katrina Memorial. “This was not just an act of remembrance,” Dr. Eva Baham, chair of the Repatriation Committee and former Dillard professor, said during an appearance on Black Press USA’s Let It Be Known News morning show. “It was a restoration of humanity.”
Each person was memorialized in a handcrafted funeral vessel etched with their name, age, and date of death. The vessels featured Adinkra symbols representing universal spirituality and were carried by students from universities in the New Orleans area. The service involved multiple faiths—including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, SGI Buddhism, the Baha’i tradition, and West African rituals—to honor the unknown spiritual identities of the deceased. “This was deeply cultural and deeply intentional,” Baham said. “We weren’t going to bring them home just to store them away. They were brought back with reverence and sealed into the earth.”
The repatriation followed a 2023 outreach by the University of Leipzig, where the crania had been housed for over a century. Researchers there acknowledged the harm done and initiated the return. The remains, all traced to individuals who died at Charity Hospital in 1871 and 1872, were taken during a time when pseudoscience like phrenology falsely claimed to measure intelligence and inferiority by skull shape—an ideology used to justify slavery and racial hierarchy. “This is how we begin to heal from the atrocities committed in the name of science,” Baham said. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, Dillard University President Monique Guillory, and community leaders led the ceremony. The final resting place, the Katrina Memorial, sits near the historic grounds where Charity Hospital once buried the poor and marginalized. “We may never know where their full bodies are,” Baham noted. “But perhaps—just perhaps—we brought them back together in spirit.”
