‘Now they are home’: human skulls shipped overseas from New Orleans for racist research to be laid to rest

Remains dating back to late 18th century are being repatriated and interred, with commemoration and jazz funeral

In the late 1800s, 19 Black New Orleanians' heads were dismembered and shipped to Leipzig University in Germany for research. The 19 had died at New Orleans' charity hospital between 1871 and 1872, and the research, which was commonplace at the time, sought to confirm and explore the now widely debunked theory that Black people's brains were smaller than those of other races.

In the 1880s, Dr Henry D Schmidt, a New Orleans physician, sent the skulls to Dr Emil Ludwig Schmidt. They were taken from the bodies of 13 men, four women and two unidentified people.