The Afterlives of Medical Exploitation: The East Marshall Street Well Project Symposium

April 27, 2024

Start time: 10:00 a.m.

End time: 2:00 p.m.

Location: MCALC 2104 and Lobby (1000 Floyd Ave, Richmond, VA 23220)

Register here

The Health Humanities Lab at the Humanities Research Center will host a mini-symposium on research related to the East Marshall Street Well Project.The program will include panel presentations, lunch, and a poster session.

During the 1994 construction of a Medical College of Virginia (MCV, which later became VCU Medical Center) building, workers uncovered the remains of 53 people in an abandoned well that became known as the East Marshall Street Well (EMSW). For callous reasons of economic expediency, the EMSW was not fully excavated, and the remains were sent to the Smithsonian, where they were placed in storage. After a 2011 documentary produced by VCU faculty Shawn Utsey, Until the Well Runs Dry: Medicine and the Exploitation of Black Bodies, drew attention to the history underpinning the discovery of the EMSW, anthropologists identified the remains as belonging to 44 adults and 9 children, mostly of African descent. Their bodies had been obtained by MCV faculty and staff (most likely through graverobbing) between 1848 to 1860, used for anatomy and dissection classes, then discarded in the EMSW. 

In 2013, VCU convened the EMSW Project to implement the recommendations of the Family Representative Council (FRC), a group composed of community leaders representing the descendant community in Richmond since the identities of the people whose remains had been excavated could not be determined. The 2018 FRC recommendations prioritize ethical research, memorialization, and reburial of the ancestors with dignity. They also emphasize the importance of better understanding the broader history of relations between Richmond’s medical institutions and the city’s African American communities. This HRC Health Humanities Lab event, in partnership with VCU Research Weeks, will provide an overview of the components of the EMSW Project and underscore its critical importance not only for VCU as it grapples with its own history of medical racism but also for other institutions nationally as they contend with their own similar histories.

Co-sponsors: The Humanities Research Center, Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, and Department of History, with additional funding from a VIP grant from the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation.