The skulls of 19 Black Americans were recently laid to rest in New Orleans, nearly a century after a racist research study was conducted in Germany.
Announced by major outlets such as NBC and NPR, a multifaith memorial service was held for the 19 victims at the Hurricane Katrina memorial. The burial proceedings included a jazz funeral and music from the Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective.
In the early 1870s, all 19 patients succumbed to natural causes; about 13 patients are believed to have been men, four are believed to have been women and two still remain unidentified. Specific names include Marie Louise, a New Orleanian citizen who passed away due to malnutrition; Hiram Malone, who died at age 21 due to tuberculosis after moving from Alabama to Louisiana; and Samuel Prince, a 40-year-old cook who passed away from tuberculosis.
All 19 Black patients died at the Charity Hospital, an institution that served every demographic in New Orleans. A physician is believed to have given their skulls to a German researcher who was involved in the pseudoscience of phrenology. The people were referred to as “specimens” as they attempted to find connections between skull size and intellect. The racist research study theorized white superiority through skull size.
A century later, the remains were returned to New Orleans by the University of Leipzig, which acknowledged that they were taken “in a colonial context and unethically.”
“All kinds of experiments were done on Black bodies living and dead. People who had no agency over themselves,” said historian Dr. Eva Baham, per CNN. “It is a demonstration of our own morality here in New Orleans and in Leipzig with the professors there who wanted to do something to restore the dignity of these people.”
Throughout the years, Black people have been the subject of numerous medical exploitations surfacing as manifestations of racism and forms of oppression.
Unethical experimentation has spanned across hundreds of years, well into the 20th century.
From 1932 to 1972, 600 Black men involved with the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study were subjected to what they were told to be treatments for “bad blood” in exchange for free medical exams, meals and treatment for minor ailments. Approximately 399 men had the illness while 201 were control subjects.
For years, after penicillin was identified as a treatment for syphilis, the medication was denied to the research participants. The study ceased in 1972 only after a report by the Associated Press prompted an investigation, which determined the study was unethical.
Black women have also been victims of a large number of unethical studies, with the foundations of gynecology stemming from racist experimentation. Dr. Marion Sims, known by many as the Father of Gynecology, experimented on enslaved women without their consent. He repeatedly conducted experimentation, such as reparation of the fistula, on them without the use of anesthesia.
Although painful experimentation was conducted on multiple women, the names of three have been revealed- Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey. It’s been revealed that the same surgery was conducted on Anarcha 30 times.
The long history of medical exploitation has bred transgenerational trauma amongst Black Americans. Per the Pew Research Center, 55% of Black Americans believe nonconsensual experimentation is being conducted on Black Americans today.
Approximately 78% agree that medical researchers experiment on Black people without their knowledge at all.
