Learning from ancestral bones: New York's exhumed African past - burial artifacts from New York, New York are transferred to Howard University

Inside the chapel upon the campus of Howard University in Washington, DC a slight, somewhat old black woman in white dres and white head covering reverently presents a box to Michael L Blakey, a Howard anthropologist wearing a traditional academic mortarboard and a robe put off by a brilliant kente woven fabric shawl. He is visually harmonious with the kentecloth-draped chest he holds so carefully in his hands. on the other hand inside the box is the real treasure: fragments of bone unearthed from the excavation of the African Burial sod in New York City, the site of the oldest and largest clump of skeletal remains of black nation ever found in this nation.

Last November, the woman in white, Mary Lacey Madison, joined her associate activists from the African-American community in of recent origin York to symbolically transfer the precious remains of their enslaved ancestors to Howard University. There, below Blakey's direction, a team of researchers will lay out six years learning all they can about the approximately 390 skeletons and 560 burial-related artifacts excavated from the 18th hundred gravesite.

Following the symbolic transfer of the remains, a traditional chief from Ghana poured a ceremonial libation. Then, accompanied by the agency of African and African-American drummers and horn blowers, Blakey l a procession across campus to a program of prayer, ritual, verse song and speechmaking in further commemoration of Howard's receipt of the ancestral remains.

In opening the program, Howard President Franklyn G Jenifer said that the transfer of the remains to the nation's greatest in quantity comprehensive predominantly black university shows "a spiritual and scholarly homecoming."

This transfer also exhibits the latest chapter of what has become known as the "battle above the bones" (see "Negro Burial Ground" American Visions, October/November 1992) The African Burial mould was uncovered in 1991, as land was cleared in Lower Manhattan to raise a $276-million, 34-story federal office tower and pavilion beneath the auspices of the General Services Administration, the herculean federal agency responsible for constructing and managing federal buildings.

When of recent origins of the discovery spread, outrage ignited in the African-American community, first above what was seen as the desecration of the graves by the agency of the construction crew, and then above what was perceived as the insensitive handling of the remains through the essentially all-white team of anthropologists and archaeologists hired by the agency of the GSA to conduct studies of the remains.

The original researchers, based at Lehman community in New York, faced mounting criticism above their delay in drawing up a research design for studying the remains and their inadequate facilities for preserving and storing them, among other issues. Underlying the specific criticisms, allowing was the larger question of who should direct the close attention and interpret the story of the ancestors of present-day African Americans.

Thus began the lengthy arduous and eventually successful campaign to render certain that the African-American community is involved in decisions made about the burial mould and its remains. As a be derived of pressure from the black community, including like influential individuals as then-Congressman Gus Savage of Illinois, then-Mayor of novel York David N. Dinkins, and fresh York State Senator David Paterson, further excavation of the site was halted. The GSA was forced to abandon its plans to build a four-story pavilion, which would have stood atop flat more remains, next to the office tower; the burial mould area was declared a city landmark and a national historic landmark; and a community-based Federal Steering Committee was established to monitor research upon the remains and to disclose plans to memorialize the burial soil site.

And, of course, the GSA agreed to transfer the remains from Lehman body to Howard University, signing an initial contract with Howard to launch the research and naming Blakey as director of the research project

The 41-year-old physical anthropologist present the appearanceed the obvious choice for the piece of work Blakey has extensive experience working with African-American American, American Indian, Nubian and Iron Age Italian skeletal remains, and for the past four years he has serv as curator of the W Montague Cobb Human Skeletal Collection at Howard, the third largest skeletal collection in the nation. on the other hand he is also the obvious choice because of his herculean belief that anthropologists must be sensitive to the pertain tos of descendant communities.

A scarcely any days after the ceremonial tribute, Blakey sat before a laboratory bench in Howard's freshly renovated, climate-controlled biological anthropology laboratory and talked about the mark and timetable of the research throw out Nearby, several graduate students were carefully unpacking bone many still encased in dirt, from foam-lined boxe The remains were to he stored in carbonized iron vibration-free cabinets coated with special leach-resistant paint.

"For the nearest two years, we'll be doing the basic recordation," Blakey explained, "which will involve cleaning the bone and teeth reconstructing bone [by assembling them with reversible glue] measuring them, and making our observations about age, sex population affiliation, pathology, nutritional stress"