Penn Museum to Bury Skulls of Enslaved People

More than 175 years after his death, a man named John Voorhees may finally have a proper burial.

Mr. Voorhees died of consumption, or tuberculosis, at a Philadelphia hospital for the poor in 1846, when he was 35 years old. But, after his death and without his consent or knowledge, his remains ended up in the hands of Samuel George Morton, a 19th-century physician and anatomist known for his influential racist theories on intellect.

Mr. Voorhees is one of 13 Black Philadelphians whose skulls were part of Mr. Morton’s collection. Come fall, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, known as the Penn Museum, is hoping to give them a traditional burial ceremony that it said was long overdue. Students had for years called for the remains to be returned to descendants.

“It’s a really important moment to do the right thing and acknowledge the problematic history of parts of this collection,” said Christopher Woods, the director of the museum, which has held the Morton collection since 1966. “These individuals were collected under absolutely terrible circumstances —...