Revealing the Smithsonian’s ‘racial brain collection’

The Washington Post spent a year examining the Smithsonian’s collection of human remains, including 255 brains. Reporters reviewed thousands of documents, including studies, field notes and personal correspondence, and interviewed experts, Smithsonian officials, and descendants and members of communities whose remains were targeted for collection. The Post also obtained from the National Museum of Natural History an inventory of all human remains in its possession, which allowed reporters to publish the most extensive analysis of the collection to date.
The National Museum of Natural History has at least 30,700 human bones and body parts in storage

The Smithsonian’s collection of human remains is one of the largest in the world. It includes mummies, skulls and teeth, representing an unknown number of people. It also has a collection of brains, which were taken mostly from Black, Indigenous people and other people of color.

The remains are the unreconciled legacy of a grisly practice in which body parts were scavenged from graveyards, battlefields, hospitals and morgues in more than 80 countries.

Most of the remains appear to have been gathered without consent from the individuals or their families, by researchers preying on people who were hospitalized, poor, or lacked immediate relatives to identify or bury them. In other cases, collectors, anthropologists and scientists dug up burial grounds and looted graves.
Brains were collected to further racist theories

In 1903, Ales Hrdlicka (hurd-lich-kuh), an anthropologist and curator for the U.S. National Museum, the predecessor to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, started what he referred to as the “racial brain collection.” Hrdlicka believed that White people were superior and collected body parts to further now-debunked theories about anatomical differences between races.

He was widely viewed as an expert on race, evolution and human variation and believed that collecting body parts would help with the discovery of the origins of people in the Americas. He was featured in newspapers frequently, and his beliefs influenced U.S. government policies on race.




Of brains collected in the United States, Black people represent the largest racial group

Hrdlicka started collecting in the Smithsonian’s backyard, seeking bodies from hospitals, morgues and medical schools. He eventually acquired 74 brains in the Washington area, the largest regional group within the brains still held by the Smithsonian, according to records reviewed by The Post. Of those, 50 had race recorded, and 35 of those brains were taken from Black people.

Black people also stood out nationwide: Of the 77 brains taken within the United States that have race recorded, Black people represent the largest racial group, with 57 brains taken.
A global network gathered remains without consent for the Smithsonian

Over the 40 years in which Hrdlicka led the physical anthropology division at the Smithsonian, he recruited and built an international network of anthropologists, scientists, doctors and professors to collect body parts on his behalf, records show. Hrdlicka and the Smithsonian sometimes purchased the remains, or reimbursed donors for the cost of shipping body parts to Washington, records show. Researchers sent him human remains from the Philippines, South Africa, Malaysia, Germany and across the United States.

Of the more than 30,700 human remains that the museum still holds in storage, more than 19,000 — or about 62 percent — were collected while Hrdlicka was head of the physical anthropology division, according to a Post analysis.

He preyed on Indigenous populations, willing to go to extreme, sometimes brutal, lengths to acquire remains. In Mexico, he cut the heads from the bodies of Indigenous people who had been massacred by the government. In St. Louis, he expected that some of the Indigenous Filipino people on display at the 1904 World’s Fair would die, so he made plans to take their brains. On one trip to Peru, he collected more than 2,000 skulls.
The museum has been slow to repatriate remains

The Natural History Museum has lagged in its efforts to return the vast majority of the remains in its possession to descendants or cultural heirs, The Post’s investigation found. Of the brains in its collection, the museum has repatriated only four.

The Smithsonian requires people with a personal interest or legal right to the remains to issue a formal request, a virtual impossibility for many would-be claimants since they are unaware of the collection’s existence.

The Natural History Museum said that in the last three decades it has returned 4,068 sets of human remains and offered to repatriate 2,254 more. Those remains belong to more than 6,900 people, because some sets include the remains of more than one person.




As The Post reported, the Smithsonian took action

As The Post investigated, the Natural History Museum hired two researchers to look into the stewardship and ethical return of body parts and other objects. It also restricted access to human remains and shared with The Post plans to relocate the brains.

In April, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III issued a statement apologizing for how the institution collected many of its bodies and body parts in the past. He also announced the creation of a task force to determine what to do with the remains. In an interview, Bunch said it was his goal to return as many body parts as possible.