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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Bones of Black children killed in
police bombing used in Ivy League anthropology course</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ed Pilkington -
April 23, 2021<br>
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<p>The bones of Black children who died in 1985 after
their home was bombed by Philadelphia police in a
confrontation with the Black liberation group which was
raising them are being used as a “<a
href="https://www.coursera.org/lecture/real-bones-forensic-anthropology/1-1-losing-personhood-move-a-case-study-U4iBa"
moz-do-not-send="true">case study</a>” in an online
forensic anthropology course presented by an Ivy League
professor.</p>
<p>It has emerged that the physical remains of one, or
possibly two, of the children who were killed in the
aerial bombing of the Move organization in May 1985 have
been guarded over the past 36 years in the
anthropological collections of the University of <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/pennsylvania"
moz-do-not-send="true">Pennsylvania</a> and Princeton.</p>
<p>The institutions have held on to the heavily burned
fragments, and since 2019 have been deploying them for
teaching purposes without the permission of the
deceased’s living parents.</p>
<p>To the astonishment and dismay of present-day Move
members, some of the bones are being deployed as
artifacts in an online course presented in the name of
Princeton and hosted by the online study platform
Coursera. <a
href="https://www.coursera.org/learn/real-bones-forensic-anthropology"
moz-do-not-send="true">Real Bones: Adventures in
Forensic Anthropology</a> focuses on “lost personhood”
– cases where an individual cannot be identified due to
the decomposed condition of their remains.</p>
<p>It uses as its main “case study” the events of May
1985, producing as prime evidence a set of bones
belonging to a girl in her teens retrieved from the
ashes of the Move house at 6221 Osage Avenue in <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/philadelphia"
moz-do-not-send="true">Philadelphia</a>.</p>
<p>The revelation comes just days before Philadelphia
stages its first official day of remembrance over the
1985 bombing, following a formal apology issued by the
city council last year.</p>
<p>The disclosure, first reported by the local news outlet
<a
href="https://billypenn.com/2021/04/21/move-bombing-penn-museum-bones-remains-princeton-africa/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter"
moz-do-not-send="true">Billy Penn</a>, also lands in
the middle of a fevered debate over academia’s handling
of African American remains that has been rocket-charged
by the nationwide racial reckoning in the wake of George
Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis last year by a police
officer.</p>
<p>On 13 May 1985, Philadelphia police <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/10/move-1985-bombing-reconciliation-philadelphia"
moz-do-not-send="true">dropped a bomb</a> from a
helicopter on to the roof of a communal house occupied
by members of Move, an organization that bore comparison
to the Black Panthers combined with back-to-nature
environmental activism. In the ensuing inferno, the Move
house as well as the entire surrounding neighborhood was
razed to the ground.</p>
<p>Eleven people linked to the group were killed. Among
them were five children, aged seven to 14.</p>
<p>Last year <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/13/philadelphia-1985-move-bombing-apology"
moz-do-not-send="true">the city apologized formally</a>
for the “immeasurable and enduring harm” caused in the
bombing, paving the way to this year’s inaugural
commemoration.</p>
<div><span><img alt="Smoke billows over rowhouses in West
Philadelphia after the 1985 bombing."
src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/642778884c29a9ee05c26a861424fd908a87c073/0_269_3678_2207/master/3678.jpg?width=465&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=a34e14182e9145089a13baa40b68f636"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="445" height="267"></span></div>
<span></span></div>
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<span>Smoke billows over rowhouses in West Philadelphia after the
1985 bombing.</span> Photograph: Bettmann Archive
<p>The forensic anthropology course in which the bones of a Move
child are being used has almost 5,000 enrolled students. It was
filmed in February 2019 and is taught by Janet Monge, an adjunct
professor in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and
a visiting professor in the same subject at Princeton.</p>
<p>The Move “case study” is broken up into five online videos, in
which Monge relates the history of the 1985 catastrophe. In one
video she picks up the bones and holds them up to the camera.</p>
<p>Monge describes the remains in vivid terms. They consist of two
bones – a pelvis and femur – that belonged to a small girl
probably in her teens that were discovered held together
“because they were in a pair of jeans”.</p>
<p>The pelvis was cracked “where a beam of the house had actually
fallen on this individual”. The fragment showed signs of burnt
tendons around the hip joint.</p>
<p>“The bones are juicy, by which I mean you can tell they are the
bones of a recently deceased individual,” Monge continues. “If
you smell it, it doesn’t actually smell bad – it smells kind of
greasy, like an older-style grease.”</p>
<p>The UPenn and Princeton academic does not inform her students
that she is displaying the remains without permission of the
girl’s family. She is, however, open about the tragic nature of
the confrontation that led to the child’s death in Osage Avenue.</p>
<p>“It was one of the great tragedies, to witness the remains as
they were found and moved from this location … I still feel
unsettled by many aspects of it,” she says. She also shares with
the class that Move continues to exist to this day: “The
organization is still active in Philadelphia.”</p>
<p>The display of the human remains of a Black girl who would be
in her 40s today had she survived the police bombing that took
her life is certain to intensify the debate over the way the
remains of Black people are handled by academia. The subject has
been a talking point for decades, but has intensified in recent
months following the mass protests over Floyd’s death.</p>
<p>The Move bones have never positively been identified. But given
their small size and features, they almost certainly belong to
one of the older Move girls who died in the inferno.</p>
<p>The oldest was a 14-year-old called Tree Africa (all members of
Move take the last name Africa to denote their collective
commitment to Black liberation). Michael Africa Jr, a Move
member who was a friend of Tree’s and who was six at the time of
the bombing, described her as a responsible kid who, as her name
suggested, was passionate about climbing trees.</p>
<p>“When we went to a park, the first thing she would do is scout
out the biggest tree. She was always the first one up, and she
always went the highest,” he told the Guardian.</p>
<p>Tree’s mother is Consuela Dotson Africa. At the time of the
fire she was serving a 16-year prison sentence related to an <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/31/a-siege-a-bomb-48-dogs-and-the-black-commune-that-would-not-surrender"
moz-do-not-send="true">earlier police confrontation</a> with
Move in 1978; she still lives in the Philadelphia area.</p>
<div><span><img alt="Michael Africa Jr in 2018."
src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0abce839bedf492c4d5a961ee7858af33aa0a2f3/0_0_5472_3648/master/5472.jpg?width=445&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=4600481aab2854922b6db7d712cea5a5"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="445" height="297"></span></div>
<span></span><span>Michael Africa Jr in 2018.</span> Photograph:
Ed Pilkington/The Guardian
<p>The other possible identification of the bones would be Delisha
Africa, who was 12 in 1985. When she died, both her parents –
Delbert Africa and Janet Africa – were similarly in prison in
relation to the 1978 confrontation.</p>
<p>They were part of the so-called Move 9 who were each sentenced
to 30 years to life for the contested shooting of a police
officer.</p>
<p>Both Delisha’s parents were <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/25/move-9-black-radicals-women-freed-philadelphia"
moz-do-not-send="true">released</a> <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/18/move-9-delbert-orr-africa-released-prison"
moz-do-not-send="true">from prison</a> after more than 40
years behind bars. Delbert died last June, five months after he
was paroled.</p>
<p>Janet was set free in 2019, just three months after Monge
recorded her forensic anthropology course using bones that
potentially belonged to Janet’s daughter. Janet Africa continues
to be an active Move member living in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Neither Janet nor Consuela have commented on the revelation
that their daughters’ remains are possibly being used to teach
online anthropology courses. But it is understood that neither
of them gave their consent for them to be used that way.</p>
<p>“Nobody said you can do that, holding up their bones for the
camera. That’s not how we process our dead. This is beyond
words. The anthropology professor is holding the bones of a
14-year-old girl whose mother is still alive and grieving,”
Michael Africa Jr said.</p>
<p>Africa Jr said that the discovery of the online course just
days before the inaugural day of remembrance of the 1985 bombing
was “such a shame, such a tragedy. After 36 years we find out
that not only were these children abused and mistreated and
bombed and burned, they haven’t even been allowed to rest in
peace.”</p>
<p>The precise sequence of events relating to the Move bones
remains sketchy. For years they sat in a cardboard box at the
Penn Museum, part of the University of Pennsylvania where Monge
is the leading bones expert.</p>
<p>It transpires that a Penn anthropologist, Alan Mann, acquired
the remains after he was asked in the immediate aftermath of the
bombing to provide specialist advice to the Philadelphia medical
examiner in an attempt to identify the fragments. Mann kept
possession of the bones, and in 2001 took them with him when he
transferred to Princeton.</p>
<p>The remains appear to have shuttled between the two Ivy League
institutions until 2019, when Monge, who had worked closely with
Mann over many years, filmed her online course using the pelvis
and femur fragments.</p>
<p>Where the bones are now located remains a mystery. The
University of Pennsylvania told the Guardian that a set of
remains of two bones from one individual, who has never been
identified, “have been returned to the custody of Dr Mann at
Princeton University”.</p>
<p>But Princeton told the Guardian that it had only become aware
of the issue this week and insisted it was not in possession of
the bones. “We can confirm that no remains of the victims of the
Move bombing are being housed at Princeton University,” a
spokesman said.</p>
<p>Monge did not respond to Guardian inquiries.</p>
<p>The controversy over the Move bones comes just a week after
Penn Museum <a
href="https://www.penn.museum/documents/pressroom/MortonCollectionRepatriation-Press%20release.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">apologized</a> for the “unethical
possession of human remains” in its Samuel Morton Cranial
collection.</p>
<p>The collection was compiled in the first half of the 19th
century and used by Morton to justify white supremacist
theories; it contained the remains of Black Philadelphians as
well as <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/us/Penn-museum-slavery-skulls-Morton-cranial.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">53 crania</a> of enslaved people from
Cuba and the US, which will now be repatriated or reburied.</p>
<div><span><img alt="A view of Osage Avenue in Philadelphia after
the bombing."
src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4f19252c5a39dfc25f53cdf5e4b2a48e1511cb17/94_90_4261_2729/master/4261.jpg?width=465&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=f94aa5d88def7641dbd8b25cf6f1eddb"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="445" height="285"></span></div>
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<div><span>A view of Osage Avenue in Philadelphia after
the bombing.</span> Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann
Archive
<p>Anthropologists and historians have become
increasingly sensitive to the issues around the
handling of remains. Michael Blakey, professor of
anthropology at the College of William & Mary, was
involved in the first reburial of African American
bones from the Smithsonian Institution, which took
place a year after the Move bombing, in 1986, and
involved the remains of Black Philadelphians.</p>
<p>In the 1990s he directed the development of the
African Burial Ground in New York, which was turned
into a national monument following the full
involvement of the local Black community. “We decided
then we would not conduct any research without the
permission of the community, and we created the
precedent for informed consent involving any skeletal
remains,” Blakey said.</p>
<p>The Guardian asked Blakey for his reaction to the
news that anthropologists were still deploying African
American bones in their teaching to this day in the
absence of community permission. He replied: “The
United States continues to operate on the basis of
white privilege. What you are seeing here is the
scientific manifestation of that – the objectification
of the ‘other’, and the disempathy that is socialized
in a society in which whites assume that they have
control.”</p>
<p>The misuse of Black remains for scientific purposes
has a long history in America. In 1989, construction
workers in Augusta, Georgia, discovered almost 10,000
individual human bones under the former premises of
the Medical College of Georgia.</p>
<p>The fragments came from corpses that were sold to the
college by grave robbers and taken from Augusta’s
cemetery for impoverished African Americans. The
college used them in medical training and dissections.</p>
<p>Samuel Redman, a historian at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst and author of Bone Rooms: From
Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums, said
the discovery of the Move bones was all the more
disturbing given how recently the deaths occurred.</p>
<p>“There are people alive who are affected by this, not
just in an emotional way but in a trauma-inducing way
that could be harmful. The notion of ‘do no harm’
should be part and parcel of our research and teaching
– we need to wrestle with this problem much more
completely.”</p>
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