Restoring Dignity

VCU begins work to memorialize those whose stolen corpses were used for 19th-century medical study

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The following is an extended version of the piece in our April issue, on newsstands now.

Inside the sterile environment of a research room at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the sight of bones meticulously laid out on a metallic tabletop triggered an emotional reaction from a group of visitors. 

“I expected to feel it — this is my field of study — but walking into that room, seeing those remains on the tables … several of the people with us began to cry,” recalls Joseph Jones, a College of William & Mary assistant professor of anthropology. “I think for many of us that solidified the idea, if there was any doubt, these remains need to return home.”

Jones was one of 10 people tasked by Virginia Commonwealth University in August 2015 with serving on a Family Representative Council as symbolic descendants of the people, the majority of them African-American, whose remains rested on the table. The bodies likely had been taken illegally from graves and used for medical study before the Civil War, then discarded in a well near the Egyptian Building, home to the Medical Division of Hampden-Sydney College and then the Medical College of Virginia (now VCU Medical Center). More than a century later, the remains were unearthed during construction of the Kontos Medical Sciences Building in April 1994. 

“Starting out, we were OK with no scientific research, especially considering the unique circumstances of these individuals who had been found in the well, who had been sacrificed for the development of modern American medical science,” Jones says, adding that the group traveled to Washington, D.C., in February 2016 to bear witness to the injustice inflicted on 44 adults and nine children whose corpses underwent dissection, amputation and autopsy. A newborn is represented by just two ribs. But the group saw a need to find out more about the people whose bodies were used in this way. 

After synthesizing community input and visiting places such as the African Burial Ground in New York City, the group announced draft recommendations for memorializing the remains at a public meeting in June 2016, but the suggestions were not finalized until August 2018. 

On Dec. 13 at the Kontos building on East Marshall Street, the Family Representative Council presented its final recommendations. The group proposed, among other things, DNA analysis to learn more about the people whose remains were found; placement of signs explaining the well excavation and its historical significance; and an interment ceremony at Richmond’s African Burial Ground, observing West African traditions. 

“We think the time is now, especially now, to address this legacy of slavery which entailed — as we’ve seen with these remains — accosting and actually necessitating the breaking of human bodies and human relationships,” Jones says. “So, we think that an important step would be a formal study of that legacy at the institution.”

Another of the recommendations calls for excavating the remaining estimated 10 feet of the well left untouched during the 1994 excavation. Similarly, it is unknown what lies beneath the Egyptian Building foundation — perhaps a second well.

After a rushed excavation effort, bones and artifacts recovered at the East Marshall Street site were sent to the Smithsonian for further documentation and research. It would be 17 years — after the release of psychology professor Shawn Utsey’s 2011 documentary “Until the Well Runs Dry,” about the practice of grave robbing to supply medical schools with bodies — before VCU would request formal reports on the remains.

Accompanying the Smithsonian researchers’ 2012 report was an analysis of 19th-century medical practices in Richmond by Jodi Koste, head of special collections and archives at VCU’s Tompkins-McCaw Library. The acquisition of cadavers on which to practice surgery and anatomy often relied on “resurrectionists” to steal bodies; burial grounds for free and enslaved African-Americans, a convict cemetery and grave sites of paupers were frequent targets, she wrote. Sometime between 1848 and 1856, the medical school faculty identified a well or “limb pit” in which to dispose of the human remains, according to her 2012 report to VCU President Michael Rao’s office. “MCV sealed one well and dug another during the construction of the new hospital,” Koste wrote. “It is difficult to prove conclusively that the well closed in October of 1860 was the same one uncovered by construction workers while excavating the area west of the Egyptian Building in April of 1994.”

In 2013, Rao established a planning committee to guide what is called the East Marshall Street Well Project. Now, a steering committee is undertaking the implementation of recommendations from the Family Representative Council through the work of three subcommittees focused on the research, memorialization and interment. At a Feb. 20 meeting, Kevin Allison, senior executive director for strategy and presidential administration at VCU, said the steering committee will work with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and the Smithsonian to help determine the feasibility of implementing the recommendations during the next couple of years. While the timeline and scope of the work VCU has left to sift through is still being determined, those in attendance at the December presentation emphasized the urgency of its completion.

 “We are here to say that the voices of the grave have been heard and that we have taken the time to be remorseful, to beg for forgiveness and to do whatever we can humanly think possible to attempt to bring back and restore a dignity that was denied,” said 6th District Richmond City Council member Ellen Robertson, who served on the East Marshall Street Well Planning Committee formed in 2013. “When the whole story is told, I want it to be said that each of you were here tonight as a witness to the work that needs to be done; and to the promises we are making that it will be done and that we will continue this work.”

Here is a summary of the VCU East Marshall Street Well Project Family Representative Council’s finalized recommendations for research, memorialization and interment of the human remains found on the university’s Medical College of Virginia campus:  

Research

  • Return all ancestral remains to the city of Richmond.
  • VCU should determine the feasibility of locating and retrieving remains possibly still located beneath the Kontos Medical Sciences Building. 
  • No further analysis of the human remains or associated artifacts should take place prior to approval of an East Marshall Street Well Project research agenda developed with community input.
  • Future analysis of artifacts associated with the remains should involve only nondestructive methods.
  • Research should include study of the long-term implications, impacts and relevance of the East Marshall Street Well site history for contemporary African-American medical experiences.
  • DNA and microbial analysis of the remains should be undertaken for the specific purposes of: 1) reconstructing regional genetic ancestry; 2) assessing molecular sex of juveniles; 3) reconstructing health environments; 4) identifying possible biological relationships with a targeted sample of living descendants. 
  • VCU should establish a research steering committee to assist with request for proposal (RFP) development and the vetting and selection of proposals.

Memorialization

  • Physical memorialization of the people whose remains were found and their experiences should be present at four locations within or near the Kontos Building. Most immediately, VCU should place signage indicating the excavation location and historical significance of the remains near the building entrance.
  • Build an appropriate memorial and an interactive learning center at the site of interment.
  • VCU should establish an annual memorialization event to be observed by all medical students prior to undertaking their first anatomy class.
  • VCU should develop formal guidelines for appropriate university actions, including community engagement, in the event of future discovery of human skeletal remains.
  • VCU should establish a memorialization steering committee to assist with RFP development and the vetting and selection of proposals. 
  • VCU should initiate a formal study of: 1) the legacy of slavery within the history of the university and 2) mechanisms for redressing this legacy.

Interment

  • There should be interment of all remains and associated artifacts underground at the African Burial Ground in Shockoe Bottom.
  • Hold an interment ceremony designed by funerary experts in western African burial traditions in consultation with the Family Representative Council.
  • Bury the remains and related artifacts in coffin boxes designed and crafted by West African artisans.
  • VCU should establish an interment steering committee to assist with RFP development and the vetting and selection of proposals.