It was almost a perfect day for Michael Blakey as he followed the horse-drawn hearse along New York City's Broadway with the procession celebrating the reinterment of 18th-century remains in Manhattan's African Burial Ground. Drumbeats heralded the coffins as the Rites of Ancestral Return were conducted. The media respectfully recorded the sacred progression, and the world shared a humanity far more complete than the one to which it was accustomed.
