00:00More than a century after their remains were taken and sent overseas for racist scientific study,
00:0719 African Americans are finally coming home.
00:10Their skulls were shipped from New Orleans to Germany in the late 1800s,
00:14part of a now discredited field of research known as phrenology.
00:19It is a demonstration of our own morality here in New Orleans
00:26and in Leipzig with the professors there who wanted to do something to restore the dignity of these people.
00:36Dr Henry D. Schmidt, a New Orleans physician, sent the skulls to Leipzig in the 1800s.
00:42At the time, researchers claimed skull shape could reveal personality traits.
00:47There was a belief at the time that science, through the study of a person's skull,
00:53could determine a person's personality, their character.
00:59Sounds pseudoscience to me.
01:03Also, their inferiority to others and I'm sure to non-marginalized people in different places.
01:11And to think that this would happen to African descended people is not unusual
01:20because we have enough scholarship which says that all kinds of experiments were done on black bodies living and dead.
01:30It's an old and ancient institution.
01:33Now with their dignity restored, the 19 have been honoured with a just funeral in New Orleans.
01:39New Orleans.
01:40New Orleans.
01:41New Orleans.
01:42New Orleans.
01:43New Orleans.
01:44New Orleans.
01:45New Orleans.
01:46New Orleans.
01:47New Orleans.
01:48New Orleans.
01:49New Orleans.
01:50New Orleans.
01:51New Orleans.
01:52New Orleans.
01:53New Orleans.
01:54New Orleans.
01:55New Orleans.
01:56New Orleans.
01:57New Orleans.
01:58New Orleans.
01:59New Orleans.
02:00New Orleans.
02:01New Orleans.
02:02New Orleans.
02:03New Orleans.
02:04New Orleans.
02:05New Orleans.
02:06New Orleans.
02:07New Orleans.
02:08New Orleans.
Comments