A recent Science article about objections to a plan by Penn Museum to bury the remains of Black Philadelphians referenced a 2021 report by former Penn Medicine and the Afterlives of Slavery (PMAS) affiliate doctoral fellow Paul Wolff Mitchell. The report, "Black Philadelphians in the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection," documents that the skulls of an estimated fourteen Black Philadelphians form a portion of the Morton Cranial Collection housed at the Penn Museum and that the individuals were likely born enslaved. The Science article discusses objections by community members and scientists regarding Penn's proposal to inter the remains without conducting extensive archival research to determine the identities of the individuals.
Paul Wolff Mitchell holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a historian and anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam.