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This video reflects on the use of Tree Africa’s remains by Janet Monge, an anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, during an online forensic anthropology course. Tree Africa, one of the 11 people killed in the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia, became a posthumous subject of scientific examination—her remains held up as specimens, described in vivid, objectifying detail by Monge.
I situate myself at my kitchen table, breaking the imaginary boundary between audience and creator. This choice of setting also echoes the homes destroyed in Philadelphia, spaces once filled with family memories and comfort. I hold up textbooks of US and World history to replace Monge’s display of the remains, critiquing the pervasive historical tendency in museums to exploit human bodies—particularly those of marginalized communities—for scientific or artistic purposes.
Frying sounds echo in the background, evoking Monge’s chilling description of the remains as “greasy.” Text describing the exposé of Monge’s actions and the conclusion of this case in 2021 interweave with my re-staging, confronting the viewer with unsettling truths about the continued dehumanization inherent in academia and beyond.
Scene: In February 2019, Janet Monge, an adjunct professor in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting professor in the same subject at Princeton taught a forensic anthropology course where the Move “case study” was broken up into five online videos. 11 people were killed, including Tree Africa whose bones are used by Monge, in the 1985 police bombing of the Philadelphia home of the radical, Black liberation and anti-police-brutality group MOVE. Monge relates to the history of the 1985 catastrophe.
In the educational videos used online, Monge picks up the bones and holds them up to the camera. The video has since been taken down from the internet. Monge describes the remains in vivid terms:
MONGE
They consist of two bones – a pelvis and femur – that belonged to a small girl probably in her teens that were discovered held together “because they were in a pair of jeans. The pelvis was cracked where a beam of the house had actually fallen on this individual. The fragment showed signs of burnt tendons around the hip joint.
This is one of these cases where the material has some flesh on it, which, you know, is not uncommon, actually, in forensics, in forensic anthropology. In this case, there is some soft tissue which is actually remaining. And the bones were actually burned, as well. So, it’s got quite a complicated history.
So, I’ll pick up just for a moment and show you that this is really the tissue which is present on the specimen. It’s not a lot, but it's absolutely there. This is the tendon that goes to the rectus femoris, that’s actually intact, and it’s there. The femur is with much less tissue associated with it, but you still have in the fovea capitis the anchoring ligament which is present in the head of the femur.
The bones are, I mean, we would say, like, juicy, you know, meaning that you can tell that they are of a recently deceased individual. They have a lot of sort of sheen to them. At least this one does. And that is because, of course, there’s still marrow in the marrow cavity, and it’s sort of leaching basically out and into the bone, so it gives that kind of slick sort of appearance. If you smell it, it doesn’t actually smell bad, but it smells like just kind of greasy, like in older-style grease.