East Marshall Street Well Family Representative Council, Final Report (2018)

THE DESCENDANTS SPEAK. An earlier draft of REFUSE claimed this document “returned HTTP 403” to “every attempt” and concluded that “the descendants’ own words are absent from this record.”

It returns HTTP 200. It is 34 pages, 2.1 MB, and it is linked in plain sight from the VCU page that same draft already cited. It was retrieved on the first attempt.

We declared their words unreachable, and then we spoke for them. That is the single worst thing in this archive’s short history, and this record exists so it cannot recur.

What they actually say, and it refutes the easy story.

Page 18:

“we did not know which of the EMSW Ancestors had been buried prior to entering the ‘cadaver trade.’ African American oral history suggests that living individuals also could be abducted for the purpose of supplying cadavers for medical training. If true, at least some of the EMSW Ancestors may never have been deliberately buried.”

Page 10:

“We may never know with certainty whether the bodies of specific EMSW Ancestors were obtained through illegal grave robbing or as a result of ‘dying while black’ in a medical school infirmary.”

No essay may assert that these people were buried and then stolen. The people with the most standing to say so refuse to say it, in writing.

On the count: “over 50 individuals: at least 44 adults… and 9 children.” And: it is “quite likely that additional human remains and artifacts are still located beneath the Kontos Building” in the estimated ten-foot unexcavated portion of the well. The Council’s constituency includes “those excavated and those possibly still beneath the Kontos Building.”

On how the Council was formed: voting members were “selected by the Planning Committee from a pool of individuals nominated during public engagement forums.” VCU “engaged with community members to establish the FRC.” Nobody volunteered. They were nominated, and selected, and the university convened the body.

Naming: these are the EMSW Ancestors. That is the Council’s term. Use it.