Three men whose graves were found at the original site of one of the nation’s oldest Black churches were members of its congregation in the early 19th century, a team of archaeologists and scientists in Virginia announced Thursday.

The First Baptist Church was formed in 1776 by free and enslaved Black people in Williamsburg, Virginia’s colonial capital. Members initially gathered in fields and under trees in defiance of laws that prevented African Americans from congregating.

The church’s original brick foundation was uncovered in 2021 by archaeologists at Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum that now owns the land. The excavation of graves began last year in partnership with First Baptist’s descendant community.

More than 60 burial plots have been identified. Thursday’s announcement confirmed what oral histories had long told — that previous generations were buried on the land before it was paved over in the 20th century.

“Now we know they’re ours — they’re ours,” church member Connie Matthews Harshaw said Thursday. “Those people under that soil are of African descent. We go from there.”

Three sets of remains were chosen for examination. They underwent DNA testing, bone analysis and the evaluation of archaeological evidence that was found, including 19th century coffin nails. The wood from the hexagonal coffins is long gone.

Only one set of remains could provide adequate DNA, which can indicate race, said Raquel Fleskes, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Connecticut who conducted the analysis.

Those remains belonged to a Black man between the ages of 16 and 18 who stood 5 feet, 4 inches tall. His grave contained a clothing button that was made from animal bone and still carried some cotton fiber, said Jack Gary, Colonial Williamsburg’s director of archaeology.

The young man’s grave appeared to be marked by an upside-down, empty wine bottle. His coffin was likely moved from a previous location based on the large number of nails — possibly used to reinforce the coffin — and the jumbled way his bones came to rest.

The young man’s teeth indicated some kind of stress, which could have been malnutrition or disease, said Joseph Jones, a research associate with William & Mary’s Institute for Historical Biology.

“Childhood health is a pretty good indicator of a population,” Jones added.

Michael Blakey, the institute’s director, added that few African Americans in Williamsburg were free at the time.

“It either represents the conditions of an enslaved childhood or far less likely — but possibly — conditions for a free African American in childhood,” Blakey said.

The two other sets of remains belonged to men between the ages of 35 to 45 and possibly older, based on the analyses of their bones and teeth.

One of them stood 5 feet, 8 inches and was possibly the oldest of the three. His remains were found with a copper straight pin that likely bound clothing or a funeral shroud.

The other man stood 5 feet, 7 inches and was buried in a vest and trousers. His leg bones indicated the repetitive use of certain muscles, suggesting the heavy labor of someone who was enslaved.

The graves in Williamsburg are among Black burial grounds and cemeteries that are scattered throughout the nation and tell the story of the country’s deep past of slavery and segregation. Many Black Americans were excluded from white-owned cemeteries and built their own burial spaces, often as a form of resistance.

Descendants are working to preserve these grounds and cemeteries, many of which are at risk of being lost and lack support.

“All over the country there has been reckless disregard for African American bodies,” said Harshaw, of First Baptist.

“We are now becoming an example to the rest of the country,” she said. “We’re getting interest from everywhere, with people saying, ‘Wait a minute, how do you guys do this?’”

The church’s original meeting house was destroyed by a tornado in 1834. First Baptist’s second structure, built in 1856, stood there for a century.

But an expanding Colonial Williamsburg museum bought the property in 1956 and turned it into a parking lot.

The museum tells the story of Virginia’s late 1700s capital through colonial-era buildings and interpreters. But it failed to tell First Baptist’s story.

Founded in 1926, the museum did not tell Black stories until 1979, even though more than half of the people who lived in the colonial capital were Black, and many were enslaved.

In recent years, Colonial Williamsburg has boosted its efforts to tell a more complete story, placing a growing emphasis on African-American history.

The museum plans to recreate First Baptist’s original meeting house on the land where it once stood, said Gary, the museum’s director of archaeology.

“A big part of that is to commemorate the space where the burials are located,” he said.

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ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s Stacey Abrams will join the faculty at Howard University in Washington, D.C., the next step in her reemergence after the Democrat lost her second bid to be governor of Georgia last year to Republican Brian Kemp.

Howard, one of the nation’s top historically Black colleges, said it was appointing Abrams as the Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics beginning in September.

“Stacey Abrams has proven herself an essential voice and eager participant in protecting American democracy -– not just for certain populations, but for everyone with the fundamental right to make their voices heard,” Howard President Wayne A. I. Frederick said in a statement.

The 49-year-old political activist and lawyer won’t be a traditional full-time faculty member, the university says, but she will lecture, invite guest speakers, and host symposiums. Howard says she will work across multiple academic departments to focus on “real-world solutions” to problems facing Black people and other vulnerable groups. Abrams will still live in Atlanta.

“We are at an inflection point for American and international democracy, and I look forward to engaging Howard University’s extraordinary students in a conversation about where they can influence, shape and direct the critical public policy decisions we face,” Abrams said in a statement.

Abrams’ next steps have been closely watched since her loss. She was an international election observer in Nigeria in February, has been promoting her children’s book, “Stacey’s Remarkable Books,” and announced a tour for an adult book, “Rogue Justice” beginning in May. Last month. Abrams was named senior counsel at Rewiring America, a group promoting clean energy and electrification.

In January, Abrams left open a return to politics in an interview with Drew Barrymore, saying “I will likely run again,” and adding, “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. If it doesn’t work, you try again.”

Abrams made history in 2018 as the first Black woman to be nominated by a major party for governor of an American state. Her place in politics now is unclear, though. Georgia isn’t scheduled to have any major statewide races on the ballot until 2026. Abrams was unchallenged as leader of the state Democratic Party going into the 2022 election, with voters backing her endorsed choices for down-ballot running mates. But while she has lost twice, Georgia now has two Democratic U.S. senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

Abrams, a Mississippi native, graduated from Atlanta’s Spelman College, another top historically Black institution, and has taught there as an adjunct professor. A former Atlanta deputy city attorney, she was also the minority leader of the Georgia House, an entrepreneur who tried her hand at multiple startups and a voting rights activist. A longtime writer who has now published 15 books, Abrams earned $5 million from books and speeches in the years between her pathbreaking 2018 gubernatorial loss and her second run in 2022.

Abrams is filling a chair named for a legendary figure. Waters was a professor of political science at Howard from 1971 to 1996 and later directed the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland. As a youth, he organized a lunch counter sit-in to protest segregation in his hometown of Wichita, Kansas. He later advised the Congressional Black Caucus and was campaign manager for Jesse Jackson’s pioneering presidential bids in 1984 and 1988.

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