Pennsylvania university criticized after burying bones of Black Philadelphians

• The University of Pennsylvania has historically housed hundreds of skulls used in racist scientific research promoting white supremacy.
• In response to growing calls for accountability, the university held a memorial service and laid to rest the bodies of 19 black Philadelphians.
• Although the university claims it will right the wrongs of the past, some local residents say they feel left out of the process.

For decades, the University of Pennsylvania has housed hundreds of skulls once used to promote white supremacy through racist scientific research.

As part of an effort to reevaluate human remains collections among museums, the Ivy League school last week laid to rest some remains, specifically those identified as those of 19 black Philadelphians. Officials held a memorial service for them Saturday.

The university said it is trying to right the wrongs of the past. But some community members feel left out of the process, highlighting the challenges institutions face in addressing systemic racism.

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“Repatriation should be part of what a museum does, and we need to embrace that,” said Christopher Woods, the museum’s director.

The university houses more than 1,000 remains from around the world, and Woods said he felt repatriating remains identified as coming from local communities was the best place to start. Told.

Some leaders and advocates in Philadelphia’s affected black communities have long opposed the plan. They claim the decision to rebury the remains at Eden Cemetery, a local historic black cemetery, was made without their input.

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aAliy A. Muhammad, a West Philadelphia native and community activist, said justice means not only the university doing the right thing, but letting the community decide what it should be.

“It’s not repatriation. We’re arguing that Christopher Woods doesn’t have the authority to make repatriation decisions,” Muhammad said. “The same institutions that have been managing and managing our captive ancestors for years are not the same institutions that can perform rituals on them.”

Woods told the crowd Saturday at an interfaith memorial service at the university’s Penn Museum that the identities of the 19 people were not recorded, but that the process of interment in an above-ground mausoleum meant that “the facts and circumstances have changed. “It’s designed to be completely reversible in some cases.” If future research identifies any of the remains and claims are made, “they could easily be retrieved and handed over to descendants,” he said.

“It would be a very happy day if we could return at least some of these compatriots to our descendants,” Woods said.

Later, at a blessing and swearing-in ceremony at Eden Cemetery, about 10 miles southwest of the museum in Collingdale, community advisory group member Renee McBride-Williams said, “The people who caused the problem are finally getting a solution.” I’m relieved that we’re finding it.” . ”

“In the household I grew up in, when you made a mistake, you corrected it and accepted responsibility for what you did,” she said.

“We may not know their names, but they live, they are remembered, and they will never be forgotten,” said the university’s chaplain and director of social equity and community affairs. said the Vice-Chancellor, the Rev. Charles Lattimore Howard.

In recent years, as racial justice movements have spread across the United States, many museums and universities have begun prioritizing the return of collections that were stolen or removed under unethical circumstances. But only Native Americans, one of the groups frequently harmed by archeology and anthropology, have federal laws regulating this process.

In cases like the one between the University of Pennsylvania and Black Philadelphians, institutions continue to control their collections and how they are returned.

The remains of the black Philadelphian were part of the Morton Skull Collection at the Penn Museum. In the early 1830s, physician and professor Samuel George Morton collected about 900 skulls, and after his death, the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences added hundreds more.

The goal of Morton’s collection was to prove, by measuring skulls, that the races were actually different species of humans and that whites were the superior species. His racist pseudoscience influenced generations of scientific research and was used to justify slavery in the antebellum South.

Morton was also a professor of medicine in Philadelphia, where most doctors at the time were trained, said Laila Monteiro, an anthropological archaeologist and professor at Rutgers University. The imprint of his work, which has since been disproved, is still evident throughout the medical field, she said.

“There may actually be medical racism behind it,” Monteiro said. “His ideas became part of how medical students were trained.”

The collection has been at the university since 1966, and some of the remains were used for teaching until late 2020. The university apologized in 2021 and revised its rules regarding handling of human remains.

The university has also established an advisory committee to determine next steps. The group decided to have the remains reinterred in Eden Cemetery. The following year, the university successfully petitioned the Philadelphia Orphans Court to allow the burial of all but one of the black Philadelphians, on the grounds that their identities were unknown.

Critics point out that the advisory board was made up almost entirely of university officials and local religious leaders, rather than other community members.

Monteiro and other researchers challenged the idea that Philadelphian identity was lost over time. She discovered through the city archives that one of the men’s mothers was Native American. His remains must be repatriated under the American Indian Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a federal law that regulates the return of the remains and grave goods of Native American ancestors, she said.

“They didn’t do any research themselves about who these people were and just took Morton’s word for it,” Monteiro said. “People who don’t even want to do research shouldn’t do it.”

The university removed the skull from the reburial so it could be evaluated for return through NAGPRA. Monteiro and others were further incensed when they learned the university had already buried the remains of other Black Philadelphians in public over the weekend, she said.

Members of the Black Philadelphian Descendants Community Group, an organization organized by people who identify as descendants of people at the mausoleum, including Muhammad, said in a statement that they were “devastated and hurt” that the burial took place without them. ” he said.

“Given this new information, they are taking time to process and consider how best to honor their ancestors in the future,” the group said, adding that members will be gathering information about individuals at Saturday’s memorial service. He added that he plans to distribute the information. Inside the mausoleum.

“To balance prioritizing the human dignity of the individuals with conservation due diligence and the logistical requirements of the historic Eden Cemetery, the burials of 19 Black people in Philadelphia will be preceded by interfaith rites and blessings. planned,” the Penn Museum said in a statement. Associated Press.

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Mr Woods said most area residents were satisfied with the decision to reinterve the remains in Eden Cemetery and believed it was a vocal minority who opposed it. He hopes that eventually all the people inside the mausoleum will be identified and returned.

“We encourage research to move forward,” Woods said, adding that the remains of Black Philadelphians have been collected over two centuries and that he and his staff felt the need to take more immediate action with these remains. He said that

“Let’s not extend those 200 years any further by putting these people in museum warehouses,” he said.

Even if all the skulls are identified and released back into society, the university still has a long way to go. His more than 300 Native American remains housed in the Morton Skull Collection still need to be repatriated under federal law. Woods said the museum recently hired additional staff to facilitate that process.