The Smithsonian’s human brains collection was led by Ales Hrdlicka, a museum curator in the 1900s who believed that White people were superior.
Nicole Dungca is an investigative reporter for The Post.The Post reviewed thousands of documents, including studies, field notes and correspondence from Hrdlicka’s papers, and interviewed more than four dozen experts, Smithsonian officials, and descendants and members of affected communities.
In addition to Bunch, several senior Smithsonian officials acknowledged in interviews the racism behind Hrdlicka’s work and said the anthropologist left a disturbing legacy that must be addressed. Hrdlicka, who was born in what is now the Czech Republic, received medical training from the Eclectic Medical College of New York City and the New York Homeopathic Medical College in Manhattan before moving into the field of anthropology. He was seen as one of the country’s foremost authorities on race, sought by the government and members of the public to prove that people’s race determined physical characteristics and intelligence.
In a 1904 Smithsonian manual, Hrdlicka instructed others on how to collect body parts in vivid detail, including how to package a brain for shipment to the museum and conceal the marks of an autopsy. He wrote that the “racial brain collection” was necessary to research the brains of people across the world, especially Indigenous people and Black Americans.He started collecting in the Smithsonian’s backyard.
noted that people still voluntarily donate their own organs for research on Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS. A museum document shows the brains of two Black children were collected from the morgue in Washington. When a historical Black cemetery in Manhattan was unearthed in 1991 amid construction work, Blakey helped ensure the remains were reburied and commemorated with a national monument. He said the Smithsonian could undertake a similar process.
According to Smithsonian records, Hrdlicka returned to Washington with the brain of the Bontoc man but kept only the Suyoc Igorot’s cerebellum, the part of the brain at the back of the head responsible for balance, coordination and fine motor skills. Months later, documents show, fair physicians sent Hrdlicka the complete brains of two other Filipinos: a Tagalog person and a Muslim Filipino.
With the hope of burying the cerebellum in either St. Louis or the Philippines, Langholz asked the curator to put her in touch with the Natural History Museum. Officials there, however, told her that the brain had probably been cremated. Smithsonian officials later told The Post that it was “likely incinerated” between 1908 and the 1950s, and said that officials had no evidence to conclusively identify the person whose cerebellum was taken.
Some of those brains were taken from patients at the Philippine Medical School, and others by U.S. Army officials who worked with the Smithsonian to collect skeletal remains and objects around the Philippines, records show. Officials with the medical school, now known as the University of the Philippines Manila College of Medicine, said human remains are accepted only with consent.
After The Post began reporting, the Smithsonian contacted the Philippine Embassy in D.C. with information on the human remains in the museum’s possession. Embassy officials said they have met with Smithsonian staff to discuss the remains.
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