Remains of Black Children Killed in 1985 Philadelphia Police Bombing Used in Ivy League Anthropology Course

The bones of Black children who were murdered by police in the 1985 Move bombing in Philadelphia are being used in an Ivy League anthropology course.

The remains of one or two Black children killed by Philly police back in 1985 are being used as a “case study” in an online forensic anthropology course taught by an Ivy League professor. Eleven people involved in the Move group were killed. Included in that group were five children, who were between seven and 14 years old.

Philly police unleashed aerial bombs on top of where the Move organization, a Black liberation group, was located in May 1985. The University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University have been keeping the children’s remains for the past 36 years and have never sought permission from the children’s living parents to do so.

“Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology” is the course, which states it focuses on “lost personhood,” involving cases in which a person cannot be identified because of the decomposed condition of their remains, the outlet reports. The “case study” revolves around the May 1985 incident. The bones belong to a teen who police took with them after the Move house on 6221 Osage Avenue in Philadelphia was bombed.

It wasn’t until last year that the city apologized for the “immeasurable and enduring harm” the city caused the Black community. “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,” said Michael Africa Jr., a Move member who was a friend of Tree, one of the girls who was killed in the bombing. “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.

The University of Pennsylvania told the Guardian that a set of remains that have never been identified have “have been returned to the custody of Dr. Mann at Princeton University.” However, Princeton claim they just found out about the issue this week and insisted that they do not have the bones. “We can confirm that no remains of the victims of the Move bombing are being housed at Princeton University,” a spokesman said.