Imagine finding out a friend had taken something that belonged to you during a tragic incident. Say, your house burned down. That friend kept this item for years and they always denied it when you confronted them about it, but you knew they kept the item. This ruined your relationship, right?
Well, the Penn Museum has done the same thing. Except, it wasn’t just an item — the museum held onto human remains. In November 2024, the Penn Museum alleged that they had “uncovered” another set of remains from the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia.
The MOVE bombing occurred on May 13, 1985 when the Philadelphia Police Department dropped an explosive on a residential home occupied by members of the MOVE organization, a Black liberation group. The following year, the city of Philadelphia’s Medical Examiner’s Office approached forensic anthropologists at the Penn Museum to help in the identification of bone fragments from the 1985 MOVE bombing. The city’s MEO then handed over the bone fragments to the anthropologists in order to conduct the forensic investigation.
The Africa family had multiple family members who died in the tragedy. While in 2021, the Penn Museum claimed that all remains were handed back to the Africa family, the remains of Delisha Africa, who had perished in the bombing, remained unreturned. In 2023, activists continued to fight for the return of the remains of Delisha Africa.
Penn prides itself on its high ethical and moral caliber. Despite this, they chose to hold the remains of a human body against the will of the family to which it belonged. The Penn Museum only recently returned the remains of Delisha Africa to the Africa family in November 2024, after years of criticism from activists and media.
How could this just be a lapse in judgment? How could this just be an administrative blunder? These aren’t just human remains. This was someone’s child, of whom the Penn Museum had been entrusted to handle the remains in order to help in an investigation. Those were never returned, and the Africa family was stripped of a proper burial for a beloved family member for decades.
This is not the first time Penn has been caught in a scandal regarding the mishandling of human remains. For decades, the Penn Museum has been in controversy regarding handling of the Morton Cranial Collection, a vast archive of skulls taken from marginalized communities, including enslaved peoples. Penn continued this pattern of mishandling remains, particularly those of Black Philadelphians who were victims of state violence, demonstrating a deep-seated institutional failure.
While the Penn Museum may have created a human remains policy, this policy is not enough. This policy was created as part of fulfilling an action step in the Morton Collection Committee’s Report on recommendations for the handling of collection. Even under this policy, the Museum failed to fulfill its goals. How do we know if the Museum can be trusted to continue to follow its own policy?
This isn’t a case of poor record-keeping — it’s a moral failure. A university that positions itself as a leader in ethics, human rights, and social responsibility should not be complicit in such blatant disregard for Black lives, even in death. The Penn Museum’s actions reinforce a historical pattern in which Black bodies are dehumanized, commodified, and treated as research subjects rather than people deserving of respect.
The Penn Museum, and by extension the entire University, must take immediate and transparent action to correct this injustice. The University must conduct a full audit of all human remains in its possession and establish clear ethical guidelines to prevent such a travesty from occurring again. More importantly, this cannot be another moment where Penn issues a carefully worded statement, promises change, and quietly moves on without action. There must be public accountability, and that starts with making the findings of any internal investigations fully accessible to the Penn and Philadelphia communities. Moving forward, there must also be an ethics committee that oversees the handling of human remains and ensures the fulfillment of the human remains policy. Ethics committees have been standard museum practice for decades, and the Penn Museum should not be exempt to that.
While Penn might claim they maintain good relationships with the Philadelphia community, simply creating a center for it isn’t enough. This instance has ruined Penn’s relationship with the community, especially Black Philadelphians, because of its unethical practices. The University and the Penn Museum must prioritize maintaining relationships with the community around them, restoring the trust we place in this powerful institution.
HARMAN CHAHAL is a College first year from Modesto, Calif. His email is harmanc@sas.upenn.edu.
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