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....