Ivy League university set to rebury skulls of Black people kept for centuries

University of Pennsylvania houses remains at Penn Museum, where they form collection once used to justify white supremacy

The University of Pennsylvania is moving ahead with the reburial of the cranial remains of at least 13 Black Philadelphians whose skulls have been kept for almost two centuries in a notorious anthropological collection used to justify white supremacy in the run-up to the US civil war.

The Ivy League university is petitioning the Philadelphia orphans' court for permission to rebury the skulls in the city's historic African American Eden cemetery. Should the ceremony go ahead, it would amount to one of the most significant restorative processes for Black remains in America in the wake of the racial reckoning following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.