Penn Museum burial ceremony for Black Philadelphians won’t lay controversy to rest

With music, prayers and apologies for the University of Pennsylvania’s treatment of human remains, about 70 people gathered for an interfaith service at the Penn Museum commemorating 19 unidentified Black Philadelphians whose skulls were stolen nearly 200 years ago by white supremacist scientist Samuel G. Morton.

The two-part event, which began in the museum’s Harrison Auditorium, ended at Eden Cemetery, a historic African American cemetery in Collingdale, Delaware County, where the remains were interred privately last week.

The public ceremony included remarks from museum director Christopher Woods and University of Pennsylvania provost John L. Jackson Jr., who acknowledged and apologized for the university’s historical contributions to racist medical theories.

“We hope and we pray that they finally have the peace that has eluded them for so very long,” Jackson said at the museum. “On behalf of the entire university, please accept my most sincere regrets, and my deepest apologies. As we continue to examine and learn from our complex and sordid history, we will endeavor to do all we can to address the wrongs of this past.”

The move is part of the museum’s ongoing efforts to dismantle and repatriate the Morton Cranial Collection, which Penn acquired from the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1966. It contains more than 1,300 crania stolen from around the world.

However, this is not repatriation, a process where an institution returns remains to descendants who decide how to memorialize their ancestors. These Black Philadelphians’ names were never recorded, and research into their identities has not yet led to living descendants.

Penn decided to inter these remains, sparking criticism and outrage from community members and anthropologists who say that not enough research had been done to identify descendants before giving them a burial ceremony — and that as the offending institution, Penn has no right to make these decisions.

“This institution cannot both be the institution that holds captive remains of people and the institution that is going to give them ceremony — those two things can’t exist together,” aAliy A. Muhammad, the West Philadelphia organizer who first called for Penn to repatriate these remains in 2019, told The Inquirer.

“Our process is, by design, fully reversible, should the facts or circumstances change. … It is my sincere hope that continued research will be successful in restoring the identity of at least some of the Black Philadelphians in the Morton collection. For now, the research continues, so let them rest in peace,” said Woods at the ceremony.

Woods referred to an arrangement that has drawn controversy in recent weeks: Though now relocated to Eden, the remains are still formally part of the museum’s collection. Penn maintains that if new research leads to descendants who want to claim them, they will reopen the mausoleums and retrieve them. It was approved by the Philadelphia Orphans Court in 2023, after the judge decided the objectors had no legal standing.

Critics say the process has been rushed forward without adequate community control in the decision making. Woods has worked with the Morton Cranial Collection Community Advisory Group that he created in 2021, which consists of six Penn employees and seven community and spiritual leaders from West Philadelphia, who decided that the Black Philadelphians should be interred at Eden Cemetery.

Anthropologists say Penn should have worked with an independent group — a descendant community — which could decide when, how, and whether these individuals should be buried. That would include people who belong to the same social group as the deceased, in this case, Black Philadelphians, who claim them as their ancestors.

“The process has been insufficiently inclusive and allowed insufficient community empowerment because it has moved too fast for that to happen,” Michael Blakey, cochair of the American Anthropological Association’s commission for the ethical treatment of human remains, told The Inquirer. “Those are decisions that are made by the university. That is apparently what they’re willing to live with.”

A Black Philadelphians Descendant Community Group was formed in May 2023, and some members were on site at the museum during the ceremony, handing out pamphlets inviting attendees to learn more about their research efforts about the deceased. “Our group disagrees with Penn’s continued exertion of power and control over Black ancestors who should be in the care of intentional and loving community,” reads the handout.

“I found it difficult to listen to [the ceremony] when, in reality, Penn hasn’t relinquished these remains,” said Jazmin Benton, a member of the group who lives in Fairmount.

Anticipating that some vocal critics might disrupt the ceremony, police and security were stationed outside the museum and at the cemetery. When the group of objectors arrived at the museum, Lyra Monteiro, a Rutgers history professor who has been critical of Penn’s efforts, was refused entry because she protested there in August and was viewed as disruptive.

Benton said the police presence was troubling.

“It felt like just the existence of people who want these bodies to actually be laid to rest and not be held by the Penn Museum was a threat — as though we are the ones doing something bad and not the literal grave robbers,” said Benton.

The group did not go to the cemetery afterward, where Penn held a final blessing in front of the mausoleums.

“In my house, the person who broke it is the one who fixes it. That’s how I see what Penn did,” said Renee McBride-Williams, head of Cedar Park Neighbors and member of the Morton Cranial Collection Community Advisory Group. “All the people who had problems, I’m not going to say I don’t get it, because I do. However, it needed to be done — 200 years is enough.”

Marilynn Miles, who lives in Aldan, Delaware County, said she was emotional hearing about how her ancestors were used for the sake of racist science, and described the event as “phenomenal.”

“It’s important for the University of Pennsylvania to recognize their error, and very important to give them a special [ceremony],” she said at the cemetery. “The thing that disturbed me is that they had African Americans in leadership apologizing. There should have been white leadership there, doing the apology.”