Overview

• Nineteen skulls removed from Charity Hospital patients between 1871 and 1872 were repatriated from Leipzig University on May 30.
• The remains underwent a traditional New Orleans jazz funeral and memorial service on May 31, honoring their identities and stories.
• The skulls were originally taken for pseudo-scientific studies aimed at proving racial superiority and those theories have since been debunked.
• Dillard University’s Cultural Repatriation Committee, alongside city and medical center partners, used hospital records to name 17 individuals and trace their origins.
• Only five of the named individuals were native to Louisiana, with the others arriving from states across the U.S. after the Civil War.