during this time. In April 1788, the Doctor Riot spread throughout New York City. The riots were led by physicians that would steal corpses from graves to study them as the supply of medical corpses was extremely low. Many of these stolen corpses came from the African Burial Ground. There was speculation that the grounds were not only being looted but were overcrowding due to the burial of unclaimed bodies in the place of the stolen remains. Some bodies had items buried with them, as part of personal and cultural rituals. An example is the silver pendant shown at right. Some heads showed filed teeth, an African ritual decoration. Howard University did forensic studies, assessing the remains for nutrition, diseases and indicators of general living conditions for African slaves and free blacks. After the Howard University studies were completed, the 419 skeletons were placed in the Ancestral Reinterment Grove here on October 4, 2003 in a ceremony including the "Rites of Ancestral Return". They were placed in hand-carved wooden coffins made in Ghana & lined with Kente cloth, which were placed in 7 sacrophagi & buried in 7 burial mounds with the heads facing west. The "commemorative ceremony was inclusive and international in scope, and was organized by GSA and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture" of the New York Public Library. This emotional memorial stretched over multiple cities including Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, and finally Manhattan. Thousands attended the reinterment and commemoration. Memorial Construction and dedication GSA ran a design competition for the site memorial in consultation with stakeholders and community activists, attracting over 60 proposals. The winning memorial design, by Rodney Leon and Nicole Hollant-Denis, was selected in April 2005. The cultural landscape architect for the memorial was Elizabeth Kennedy Landscape Architects. The memorial consists of two components: the tall Ancestral Chamber and the large Circle of the Diaspora. The height of the Ancestral Chamber represents the depth of the discovered graves. The Ancestral Chamber is made from Verde Fontaine green granite from Africa and its engraved heart-shaped Sankifa symbol from West Africa means “Learn from the past to prepare for the future”. The Circle of the Diaspora features a map of the Atlantic area in reference to the Middle Passage, by which slaves were transported from Africa to North America. It is built of stone from Africa and North America, to symbolize the two