Return, Rebury, Repatriate

Distillations | Science History Institute

In 2019, Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, a community organizer and journalist, learned that the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology had a collection of skulls that belonged to enslaved people. As Muhammad demanded that the university return these skulls, they discovered that claiming ownership over bodies of marginalized people is not just a relic of the past—it continues to this day.

Credits

Host: Alexis Pedrick Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Associate Producer: Padmini Raghunath Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer “Innate Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Resource List

It’s past time for Penn Museum to repatriate the Morton skull collection, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

Penn Museum seeks to rebury stolen skulls of Black Philadelphians and ignites pushback, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

Penn Museum owes reparations for previously holding remains of a MOVE bombing victim, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

City of Philadelphia should thoroughly investigate the MOVE remains’ broken chain of custody, by Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

Black Philadelphians in the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection , by Paul Wolff Mitchell

Some skulls in a Penn Museum collection may be the remains of enslaved people taken from a nearby burial ground, by Stephan Salisbury

Remains of children killed in MOVE bombing sat in a box at Penn Museum for decades, by Maya Kassutto

The fault in his seeds: Lost notes to the case of bias in Samuel George Morton's cranial race science, by Paul Wolff Mitchell

She Was Killed by the Police. Why Were Her Bones in a Museum?, by Bronwen Dickey

Corpse Selling and Stealing were Once Integral to Medical Training, by Christopher D.E. Willoughby

Medicine, Racism, and the Legacies of the Morton Skull Collection, by Christopher D.E. Willoughby

Final Report of the Independent Investigation into the City of Philadelphia’s Possession of Human Remains of Victims of the 1985 Bombing of the MOVE Organization, prepared by Dechert LLP and Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads LLP, for the city of Philadelphia

The Odyssey of the MOVE remains, prepared by the Tucker Law Group for the University of Pennsylvania

Move: Confrontation in Philadelphia, film by Jane Mancini and Karen Pomer

Let the Fire Burn, film by Jason Osder

Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (MOVE) Records, archival collection at Temple University's Urban Archives