Some remains of a 12-year-old girl killed in a deadly bombing in Philadelphia in 1985 have been uncovered at the Penn Museum, the museum announced this week, more than three years after city officials revealed that some remains of another victim had been found.
The remains were identified by museum researchers as matching existing documentation of Delisha Africa, a 12-year-old girl who was one of five children and six adults killed on May 13, 1985, when the Philadelphia Police Department used a helicopter to bomb a rowhouse where members of the communal, anti-government group MOVE lived in a mostly Black neighborhood in West Philadelphia.
The remains of those killed were believed to have been cremated and discarded, but in 2021, city officials announced that some remains had been stored in a box. The deadly bombing has long been a source of pain for many Philadelphians, and the revelation that the remains had been stored for decades only aggravated that anguish.
Remains believed to be from another person were returned to the Africa family in 2021, the Penn Museum said, and the museum apologized to the family and promised a comprehensive inventory of its biological anthropology section. Continuing inventory efforts led to the recent discovery of another set of remains, the museum said, adding that it had notified the family.
“Confronting our institutional history requires ever-evolving examination of how we can uphold museum practices to the highest ethical standards,” the museum said. “Centering human dignity and the wishes of descendant communities govern the current treatment of human remains in the Penn Museum’s care.”
Mike Africa Jr., an activist, writer and member of MOVE who was 6 when the bomb was dropped, declined to comment on Thursday about the museum’s discovery. Mr. Africa said that a news conference would be held later this month with current and former officials, including W. Wilson Goode, who was mayor of Philadelphia in 1985.
Mr. Africa had previously said that he and others with MOVE had not known that the bones — described as parts of a burned femur and a pelvis — had been stored for decades.
Jamie Gauthier, a member of the Philadelphia City Council, said in a statement on Thursday that it was “absolutely unacceptable that we are back in the same situation we found ourselves in three years ago.”
“The Penn Museum has demonstrated a profound disrespect for Black life and Black death,” Ms. Gauthier added. “Over a year ago, activists alerted museum leadership that the institution still possessed the remains of Delisha Africa. The Penn Museum ignored them.”
Ms. Gauthier, who represents the neighborhood where the 1985 bombing took place, called on the Penn Museum to make amends with the Africa family and the community.
On May 13, 1985, the city took action against the MOVE organization, after years of turmoil and an armed confrontation with the authorities that had left one police officer dead. MOVE was a self-described Black liberation group founded by John Africa, which was headquartered in a rowhouse on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia.
When MOVE members did not surrender on that day, the city’s Fire Department aimed water cannons at the rowhouse, and the police threw tear gas at the home. That evening, the police flew over the neighborhood in a helicopter and dropped a bomb, causing a fire that made the heat in the rowhouse reach up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to an investigation released in 2022.
Firefighters were ordered by the police to let the fire burn. Six adults, including John Africa, and five children were killed. Only two people survived the bombing, Ramona Africa and a 13-year-old boy, Birdie Africa, according to the city.
After the bombing, legal battles followed between the city and the families of the victims and survivors. In 1990, the city settled wrongful-death lawsuits for $2.5 million on behalf of the children who were killed. A federal jury awarded $1.5 million in damages to Ramona Africa and the relatives of two victims.
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