Many of us students came to WashU because we saw it as a place of discovery, innovation, and progress. Complicating this idealized image are histories of exploitation, inequality, and harm: a history that demands acknowledgement, accountability, and repair. At WashU and WashU School of Medicine, confronting the legacy of medicalized racism, eugenics, and the commodification of Black bodies is not optional. It is essential. 

At the center of this history is Robert J. Terry, former Head of Anatomy at the medical school and founder of what became known as the Terry-Trotter Human Remains Collection, a collection of over 1,800 human skeletons, 900 of whom were Black individuals. While often framed as a scientific resource, this collection is inseparable from the structural violence that produced it. Many of the individuals whose remains were collected were poor, unclaimed after death, and Black. Their bodies, taken without consent, were transformed into data points for anatomical and eugenic research. 

This was not an accident of history. It was the result of a system that targeted the most vulnerable. Anatomical collections like Terry’s drew heavily from individuals who died in public institutions: hospitals, poorhouses, and prisons. In these places, lack of resources and social support meant families could not claim their loved ones. Their remains were then funneled into medical education and research, often without dignity or recognition. 

These individuals in the Terry-Trotter Collection were not only denied autonomy in death, but their identities were often erased in the name of “science.” The data extracted from their bodies helped build medical knowledge and institutional prestige, yet their stories remain largely untold. This is what institutional accountability must address: not just what happened, but how this exploitation benefited WashU and continues to benefit us to this day. WashU must be willing to name its past clearly and publicly, and fully acknowledge the history for what it is: medical exploitation, racialized science, and systemic dehumanization. 

Acknowledgment alone, however, is not enough. Justice requires action. This includes rethinking how human remains are handled, studied, and where possible, returned. It also involves engaging with descendant communities whose voices have historically been excluded from decisions about the remains of their ancestors. By informing these communities and including them in decision-making processes, we begin to truly respect victims and restore the dignity that was denied to them. 

The Abraham Taylor Reparative Research Project plays a critical role in this. Working under the Department of African and African American Studies, the project is actively researching the Terry-Trotter collection and exploring what ethical and reparative practices might look like. Rather than treating the past as static, the project asks forward-looking questions: How should institutions reckon with histories like this? What does meaningful repair look like? Who gets to decide? Questions like these are to be answered at their symposium happening on May 1. 

These are not easy questions, but they are necessary ones. The Abraham Taylor Reparative Research Project is a model for how institutions can begin to move beyond acknowledgment toward accountability. By centering research, ethics, and community engagement, it pushes WashU to confront its past not as a closed chapter but as an ongoing responsibility. 

Ultimately, institutional accountability is about more than correcting historical records. It is about reshaping institutional values. It asks whether universities are willing to prioritize justice over reputation, transparency over comfort, and respect over tradition. 

The remains in the Terry Collection are not just artifacts of scientific history; they are evidence of lives lived in inequality and systems that treated those lives as expendable. To honor them requires more than study. It requires change. 

WashU now faces a choice: to treat this history as a footnote, or to engage with it as a call to action. The path forward will not erase the past, but it can determine what kind of institution WashU chooses to be in the present.