SCIENCE sciencemag.org 9 JULY 2021 • VOL 373 ISSUE 6551 153L
ike the 51 enslaved people of African
descent whose bodies were dug up
in Cuba in 1840 for anthropologist
Samuel Morton’s collection, the
36 people buried in downtown
Charleston, South Carolina, were name-
less. No record of the graveyard or those
buried in it existed, making it likely they
were also enslaved Africans or
their descendants.
But the fate of their remains, found
during construction in 2013, was different
from those in the Morton collection (see
main story, p. 148). Instead of being ac-
quired by scientific collectors, the 36—as
African American retired teacher La’Sheia
Oubré of Charleston calls them—became
the responsibility of the city and its Black
community, who turned to scientists to
help discover their identities and
life stories.
Called to investigate, archaeologists
noted that the 36, also known as the An-
son Street Ancestors after the location of
their graves, had been buried with care, in
regular rows. Nails and brass pins showed
many had been wrapped in shrouds.
Buttons, including one made of mother-
of-pearl, showed they had been dressed
by people who mourned them. Pieces of
clay tobacco pipes were buried with two
men, and a copper coin—a West African
tradition—with another person. One man’s
incisors had been filed into points, a rite
of passage in West Africa. A child had two
copper half-pennies placed over their eyes.
The half-pennies, minted in 1773, and
other offerings helped date the graveyard
to between 1760 to 1790, when enslavedAfricans made up nearly half of Charles-
ton’s population.
The nonprofit Gullah Society, which
protects African and African American
burial grounds around Charleston, held
consultations about the 36 with the city’s
Black and African American communi-
ties. The community wanted to rebury
them with love, honor, and respect. But
first they wanted to learn everything they
could about the 36, including their genetic
ancestry. So Ade Ofunniyin, an African
American anthropologist and founder of
the Gullah Society, invited anthropological
geneticists from the University of Pennsyl-
vania to collaborate.
“Right from the get-go it was set up that
we were going to try to levy our resources
and expertise to answer the questions and
[serve the] needs of the community,” says
one of the geneticists, Raquel Fleskes,
who is white and now at the University of
Connecticut, Storrs. When, working alone
in a sterile lab, she ground up small pieces
of bone from each of the 36 and extracted
their DNA, she wore a GoPro camera on
her head to share the process with the
community. Every bit of sampled bone was
saved to be reburied. Other researchers
measured strontium isotopes in teeth and
bones, which preserve chemical signatures
of where a person grew up and lived.
Although 35 of the 36 had types of mito-
chondrial DNA—genetic material inherited
through the mother—common in Central
and West Africa, one woman’s mtDNA
linked her with Native American groups.
The finding pointed to the intertwined
histories of Black and Indigenous people inCharleston, as people from both communi-
ties were enslaved. Most of the 36 had lived
in Charleston all their lives. The results were
published in October 2020 in biological
anthropology’s flagship journal, the Ameri-
can Journal of Physical Anthropology.
From what was learned about the heri-
tage and sex of the 36, the Gullah Society
organized a ceremony, presided over by
Yoruba priests, to give each a name. The
child with the half-pennies placed on the
eyes is Welela. Welela was buried next to
Isi, an adult with an identical mitochondrial
genome, so at least two of the 36 were
buried with family.
On 4 May 2019, a horse-drawn hearse
carried some of the remains through
Charleston’s streets for reburial near their
original resting place. A crowd followed,
filling the air with drumming and chants.
“Every group of people that were identified
within the 36 were part of the ceremony,”
remembers Oubré, who works with the
Anson Street African Burial Ground project.
“Native American, African, Caribbean,
children, adults. We had dancing, we had
music. ... Never before had Charleston seen
such grandeur.”
The remains were laid in a burial vault
with notes written by the community. “To
my beloved ancestors, thank you for life
and making your journey to Charleston,
SC. You are honored and may God bless
your souls,” one read. Ofunniyin read out
each of the 36 names, and the community
echoed them back.
“It is our responsibility to take care of our
elders,” Oubré says. “Without them, there
would be no us.” — L .W.Charleston honors Black ancestors, with both science and ceremony
Community members from Charleston, South
Carolina, photograph a plaque bearing the
newly bestowed names of 36 people of African
descent, who were reburied with honor in 2019.PHOTO: BRAD NETTLES/THE POST AND COURIER0709NewsFeatures.indd 153 7/2/21 5:56 PM