Many remains in Mississippi were discovered by Delta farmers developing land in the 1950s to 1970s. In some instances, shell beads, stone tools, celts and vessels found in burial sites in the U.S. have been put on exhibit.
Around 83,000 remains in the U.S. have been returned to descendants as of this fall, according to data provided to The Associated Press by the National Park Service. But at least another 116,000 ancestors are still waiting to be returned.
This year, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History completed the largest repatriation in Mississippi’s history, returning 403 remains to the Chickasaw Nation. However, there are still at least 1,000 remains in Mississippi that have yet to be returned.
With slavery s impact, how do Black residents find ancestors
ISABELLE TAFT, The Sun-Herald
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BILOXI, Miss. (AP) Her tree was incomplete.
That’s how it looked to Melissa Evans when she compared her family tree to the ones created by her third-grade classmates. Some of her white classmates had branches stretching back centuries. Evans, one of only a handful of Black students at her school in Gulfport, traced her family to her great-grandparents.
When other students asked why Evans’ tree was so short, their teacher didn’t want to talk about slavery, how it tore apart Black families in the United States, and Evans isn’t sure it would have been the right setting for the conversation anyway. More than 30 years later, she remembers the feeling of embarrassment, of lacking something.