Sankofa?: How Racism and Sexism Skewed New York’s Epochal Black Research Project

SANKOFA? How Racism and Sexism Skewed New York's Epochal Black Research Project is an investigative report on an important - and costly - anthropological study that failed. The research was on bones dug up from a black slave cemetery in New York City. The city's current black population - the "Descendant Community" - was promised key information about their ancestors and antecedents. But little was provided. This failure, carefully described here, casts light on the relationship between the researchers who do the work and the federal government, which pays for it - with taxpayers' dollars. The Fed failed to monitor this project closely until it slipped its traces. The scientists and the government hid the problems from the public. Only later was Author David Zimmerman able to pursue the matter through documents and interviews with some of the participating scientists. The Project Leader, Anthropologist Michael L. Blakey, PhD, and his close associates refused Zimmerman's interview requests. Others scientists were forthcoming. This is a sad but dramatic account, written for all readers, of science gone wrong. It is a cautionary tale designed to enlighten readers and, it is hoped, discourage other such debacles..

DAVID ZIMMERMAN is a prize-winning science writer and investigative journalist. A Midwesterner, educated at the University of Chicago and Brandeis University, has been writing for both general audiences and professional scientists for over 60 years. He was for long the medical columnist in the Ladies’ Home Journal. Later he wrote an investigative newsletter called PROBE. It has taken a dozen years for him to research and report the concealed problems that badly damaged the African Burial Ground Project. This is his sixth book. Mr. Zimmerman lives and works in Northern Vermont.