Remains of disinterred Louisiana slaves to be reburied, 36 years on

In 1975, the US army corps of engineers opened a Louisiana spillway and discovered the remains of at least five pre-civil war slaves. On Wednesday night – 36 years later – army officials will meet members of the local community to discuss how they might finally lay their ancestors to rest. Fifty-two bones, along with a number of artefacts, including a bible and headstone, washed into a drainage ditch that the army had been building. It turns out that the spillway they were working on, built in the aftermath of the devastating 1927 Mississippi river flood, had been built on the grounds of two forgotten cemeteries for slaves and black union soldiers. The Kugler and Kenner cemeteries in southern Louisiana date back to the late 18th century, and are located on the grounds of two plantations, owned for decades by the Oxley and Kenner families. But two years after 1927 flood, the federal government purchased the land to build the Bonnet Carre spillway over it – and, inadvertently, the remains of hundreds of souls. According to a statement from the US army, "burials in the two cemeteries were not removed when the lands were acquired by the federal government." The spillway was built to channel floodwaters from the Mississippi river to Lake Pontchartrain and on into the Gulf of Mexico. And while members of the local community remembered during the construction of the spillway that the cemeteries had existed, the exact locations were reportedly lost to memory. The army corps of engineers opened the spillway in 1975 only to find bones that had been buried at Kenner cemetery. Ten years later, a more in-depth investigation of the area was undertaken and the Kugler site was discovered. In 1987 the National Register of Historic Places recognised both sites in its official listing. The army says the remains and artefacts uncovered were left in place and the bones that had been disinterred in 1975 have been housed in archaelogical storage, cared for by a local New Orleans contractor. Descendants of those who had been buried in the cemeteries or lived on the land were notified of the investigation. In 2002, the army corps of engineers began a three-year dialogue with them to determine how best to honor their relatives. "The descendants who responded to the elicitation of opinion unanimously stated a preference for the burials to remain in place. An overwhelming majority of respondents were in favor of delineating and memorialising the cemeteries," the army wrote in a statement. "The great majority of descendants agreed that the human remains disinterred in 1975 should be reburied at the Kenner cemetery," the statement added. The ancestors will get their say on Wednesday night at St Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Destrehan, Louisiana, where they will be able to put forward additional suggestions on how best to honour their relatives. Today the cemeteries are only accessible by dirt roads, and offer little to no parking for visitors. Plans for them include placing four foot-wide signs at each cemetary. There are also plans to demarcate the cemeteries with "monumental markers and tree plantings." The remains of those who were disinterred in 1975 will be re-buried in an "appropriate manner and in a public ceremony, within the buffer zone of the Kenner cemetery."