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The Elegba Folklore Society leads a traditional African ceremony honoring the people whose remains were discovered on VCU’s medical campus. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
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Members of the Family Representative Council attend the event. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
The stolen bodies of men, women and children were cut apart for medical study, discarded in a 19th-century well and forgotten for more than 100 years. In late 2019, a ceremony marked the return of their remains to the medical campus at Virginia Commonwealth University after being stored at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History for 25 years.
The remains, uncovered in 1994 during construction of the Kontos Medical Sciences Building, belong to at least 44 adults and nine children under the age of 14. Many were of African descent, likely enslaved people whose bodies were taken illegally from graves and used for medical study, then discarded.
“As you can understand, our experience of training as doctors begins with cadavers,” VCU School of Medicine Dean Peter Buckley said after the November ceremony. “They are our first patients, and so this is inevitably and always a very sacred trust for us, but ... to make a right of a wrong in history is very symbolic and very significant for us.”
The ceremony was also the realization of the first key recommendation made by the Family Representative Council, which was convened by VCU in August 2015 to serve as symbolic descendants of those whose remains were found and to determine how to memorialize them.
Other council recommendations include looking into retrieving additional remains that may still be under the Kontos Building, installing memorials around the building and holding an interment ceremony for the remains at the African American Burial Ground in Shockoe Bottom in accordance with West African burial traditions.
Joseph Jones, assistant professor of anthropology at the College of William & Mary, was one of 10 members on that council. For the Richmond native, the process was a way to bring home skills he’s gained as a biological anthropologist focused on the African diaspora.
“Seeing them laid out in that way, having understood historically that this was a big part of the cadaver trade, which we see for these individuals as an extension of the trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved Africans — that really cemented for us that VCU had to do this in the most respectful manner possible,” Jones says in an interview, reflecting on a 2016 trip to the Smithsonian where the Family Representative Council saw the recovered bones and artifacts.
VCU’s effort is part of a larger movement among academic institutions to probe their roles in perpetuating slavery and racial discrimination, and to reconcile with their pasts. The University of Richmond is in the early stages of a similar process as it investigates a patch of land on its campus that may have been a burial ground for enslaved Africans.
A burial site of enslaved people is believed to be located behind Puryear Hall, near the steam plant and parking lot U8 on the grounds of the University of Richmond. (Photo by Valerie Szalanczy courtesy The Collegian)
A 2019 report in The Collegian, UR’s student-run newspaper, details a 1935 study on Zion Town, a historically black community close to campus, which states that the land behind the university’s Puryear Hall was a plantation containing a burial ground for enslaved people before it was purchased by the school.
“It’s pretty well known that many Southern institutions that were established before the Civil War were involved either directly or tangentially with slavery and the slave trade, so I wasn’t that surprised that there was a burial ground in the vicinity,” says Julian Hayter, a historian and associate professor of leadership studies at the University of Richmond. “It was interesting to know, though, that there was a burial ground directly on campus.”
Work to verify the burial site will continue during the 2020 academic year, along with plans to memorialize those who were enslaved, according to an October message from UR President Ronald Crutcher. In January, Crutcher sent another message highlighting updated research, including a documented discussion in 1912 about the university’s plan to build a road through a known cemetery and a recommendation that any human remains be moved elsewhere, as well as accounts of discovered human remains on campus in areas that were “far from and at lower ground than the landowners’ homes.” Over the next two years, the university will attempt to connect with the descendant community and provide historical context, Crutcher states.
Hayter says the effort is a good start in advancing the campus conversation around race, diversity and how predominantly white institutions benefited not just from slavery, but from segregation and practices that enforced white supremacy.
“A lot of times, people think when an institution has a history of this nature, that it needs to be swept under the rug, and in some ways, I think it’s difficult to measure how much progress an institution has made if you’re unwilling to deal with some of the darker chapters in that institution’s history,” he says.
“To make a right of a wrong in history is very symbolic and very significant for us.” —Peter Buckley, dean, VCU School of Medicine
As the city continues its debate around Confederate monuments and considers how to tell the story of its role in the slave trade and segregation, Hayter says that parallels can be drawn to VCU and UR’s memorialization efforts.
“In some ways, the point we’re at right now at the University of Richmond is really in keeping with the point the city of Richmond is at, of really just starting to collect these stories in a way that tells a much more robust historical story of this area’s history.”
Other Virginia schools are also tackling this difficult subject. In 2019, the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg was awarded a five-year, $1 million grant to support its studies and teaching around the legacies of slavery and racism, and it unveiled concepts for a memorial to Africans who were enslaved by the university. The University of Virginia in Charlottesville formed a commission to study its relationship with slavery and commemorate the enslaved people who lived and worked on its campus.
Kevin Allison, senior executive for special projects at VCU’s Office of the President and one of the driving forces behind the East Marshall Street Well Project, says the recovered remains are being stored at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. The VCU project’s Research and Interment Memorialization Committees will carry out a multiyear effort to enact the Family Representative Council’s recommendations.
Going forward, goals of the two committees include conducting DNA and microbial analysis on the remains and developing policies for teaching medical students about the well site and its history, Allison says. Once they’re finished, an interment ceremony and community memorial will be held.
“I did want to take a moment to celebrate this particular milestone, but then to roll up our sleeves,” Jones says of the ceremony marking the return of the remains. “We’ve got a lot of work to do for the foreseeable future to have these ancestors properly interred and memorialized.”
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