It has been more than 400 years since the first Black people arrived in Virginia on the shores of what would become the United States of America.

And more than 400 years later, we are still fighting for recognition of our humanity.

That struggle has been waged throughout centuries of slavery; through public lynchings and backlash to Black gains made during Reconstruction after the Civil War’s end; into Jim Crow; and even today, with the endless brutality of police assaults and executions of Black men and women.

Another stunning example of the denial of Black people’s humanity comes out of Philadelphia, where news reports indicate that the University of Pennsylvania and its Penn Museum used for its purposes the skeletal remains of possibly two Black children killed in the horrific aerial bombing of the MOVE organization’s headquarters in West Philadelphia in May 1985.

The remains, a pelvic bone and part of a femur, were found in the aftermath of the city-ordered bombing 36 years ago that resulted in the death of 11 people, including MOVE founder John Africa and five children between the ages of 9 and 14.

An entire block of 61 dwellings was destroyed in the bombing and fire, causing more than 250 people to lose their homes.

According to reports, the remains were given to a UPenn anthropologist, Alan Mann, for forensic analysis. While the remains were never conclusively identified, they were never returned to the MOVE family members for burial and went with the professor to Princeton University when he switched jobs.

A Philadelphia newspaper reported that the bones later were sent from Princeton to the Penn Museum, where they were stored in a cardboard box. News reports indicate they were used as show and tell in a 2019 online forensic anthropology course hosted on Coursera.

The University of Pennsylvania’s apology, offered this week, rings hollow to members of MOVE, including parents of some of the children killed in the bombing. They called the city’s and the museum’s mishandling of the human remains “disrespectful and hateful” and likened it to dinosaur relics dug up and put in an amusement park exhibit.

Activists across the country have called for the firing of the museum’s curator who showed off the remains in the course video, which has since been taken off the internet. And they point out that this is another indication of “abhorrent, racist and inhumane behavior” in which Black people and Black lives are viewed as objects.

The university has hired a former Temple Law School dean to investigate what went wrong and why the remains were kept.

The story rang familiar to us in Richmond, where the remains of Black people whose bodies were used for medical purposes and to teach medical students in the 1800s were discovered in an abandoned well in 1994 during construction of Virginia Commonwealth University’s medical sciences building at 12th and Marshall streets. The bones and artifacts were sent to the Smithsonian at the time for further research.

In November 2019, the remains of 53 Black people were returned to Richmond in a solemn ceremony. They have been held by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. A VCU planning group and separate family representative council have recommended that the remains be buried in a public ceremony based on West African burial traditions at an appropriate location, possibly the African Burial Ground in Shockoe Bottom.

Lenora McQueen, an independent researcher whose work in Richmond has focused on the protection and preservation of historical but forgotten burial grounds for free and enslaved people, believes the remains discovered in the medical waste well at VCU connect directly to the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground at 5th and Hospital streets. It opened in 1816 when the African Burial Ground in Shockoe Bottom was closed.

She said the Shockoe Hill burial ground was the “main target of the illegal cadaver trade” and the place from which the majority of the remains used by VCU for medical research in the early 1800s would have come.

She now is fighting for the recognition of Black humanity by trying to get state and national historic recognition for the burial ground that she wrote was “purposely made invisible, long abused, desecrated, divided and disposed of” when railroad lines were laid through it in 1900 and it was removed from a city map in 1905. Part of Interstate 64 was built over it much later.

The city recently repurchased 1.2 acres of the sacred site that had been built over by a gas station and billboard.

Ms. McQueen and others are concerned about possible further desecration and destruction of the Shockoe Hill Burying Ground with the proposed multimillion-dollar, high-speed rail project from Richmond to Washington that would put more rail lines through the site.

The Federal Railroad Administration announced last week that it is reopening a historic site review to determine the impact the high-speed rail project may have on the burial ground.

We urge readers to contact federal, state and local officials to stop any further destruction to the historic site and to find a reasonable alternative for the high-speed rail lines that will not continue to deny who we are and our history.

We must remain in the fight for recognition of our humanity. Here are some people to contact:

John Winkle, Transportation Analyst Federal Railroad Administration, (202) 493-6067, john.winkle@dot.gov

Emily Stock, Project Manager, Virginia Department of Rail & Public Transportation, (804) 786-4440, emily.stock@drpt.virginia.gov

Gov. Ralph S. Northam, (804) 786-2211

Mayor Levar M. Stoney, (804) 646-7970 RVAMayor@richmondgov.com

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, Richmond office, (804) 775-2314 casework@warner.senate.gov

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, Richmond office, (804) 771-2221

Congressman A. Donald McEachin, Washington office, (202) 225-6365