Penn Museum uncovers remains of additional 1985 MOVE bombing victim

The Penn Museum announced on Wednesday that they have located additional human remains connected to the MOVE bombing. 

On Nov. 13, Penn museum published an update to its webpage — titled “Towards a Respectful Resolution” — where they said an “ongoing comprehensive inventory of [the museum’s] biological anthropology section” led to the discovery. The statement confirmed that the remains matched the records of Delisha Africa, and noted that the findings have been communicated to her family.

“As we promised the Africa Family and our community in 2021, we have acted with speed and transparency in returning the remains, and we will continue to do so with all human remains in our care,” the statement said. 

In 1985, the Philadelphia city government bombed a home on Osage Avenue that housed MOVE, a Black liberation advocacy group. The bombing killed 11 people — including five children aged seven to 13 — and destroyed 61 homes in the neighborhood, leaving 250 local residents without a home.

The remains included a pelvic bone and a femur that were previously in the custody of now-retired Anthropology professor Alan Mann, who received the remains from the city of Philadelphia in the 1990s after he was asked for assistance in identifying them. 

Mann studied the remains in collaboration with Anthropology professor and Penn Museum Physical Anthropology Curator Janet Monge before taking them to Princeton University for additional research. They were transferred back and forth between Penn and Princeton for over 35 years.  

At a press conference in 2023, Ramona Africa, the sole living adult survivor from the MOVE bombing, said that the Penn Museum has "abused those remains, they have refused to give us those remains, the bones." 

In 2021, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that a forensic anthropologist hired by the MOVE Philadelphia Special Investigation Committee identified some remains as belonging to a 12-year-old victim known as Delisha, and a 14-year-old victim known as Tree. The whereabouts of the remains were unclear at the time, but Penn Museum Director Christopher Woods told The New York Times that the remains were sent to Mann in April 2021. 

As of 2023, the location and status of the remains of Delisha Africa had not been confirmed to the public. 

Ramona Africa said at the 2023 press conference that she cannot trust the Penn Museum. Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, a local community activist who also spoke at the event, presented claims of new evidence of the museum’s possession of the additional remains of two victims of the MOVE bombing. The evidence came from photos of an online photo-sharing site from a public event that was hosted in 2014. 

Princeton course series titled "Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology," in which Monge and an undergraduate student examined the remains and attempted to determine the age of the bones, also previously provided evidence of the remains.