‘Harrowing and disturbing’: President Rao addresses MCV’s historical ties to slavery

Sarah Hagen, Contributing Writer

“MCV was built and operated using the labor of enslaved people,” stated VCU President Michael Rao in a university address last month. “Their work supported the lives of physicians, and their bodies were used without permission for medical research.” 

VCU commissioned a 75-page report to “fully understand the Medical College of Virginia’s connections to the institution of slavery” in response to legislation passed by the Virginia General Assembly, according to Rao’s statement. 

VCU was one of the five Civil War-era public colleges that was required to look into their history with slavery, along with the University of Virginia, Longwood University, the College of William and Mary and Virginia Military Institute, according to Virginia’s Legislative Information System. 

Rao stated the connections were expected, as MCV was founded in 1838 in the capital of the Confederacy, but referred to them as “harrowing and disturbing.” 

Sheryl Garland, the Chief of Health Impact for MCV, said VCU is working on forming a commission to move forward and comply with the guidance outlined in the General Assembly’s legislation. 

The legislation enforved the Civil War-era colleges to identify and memorialize all enslaved individuals who worked on MCV grounds and provide a “tangible benefit” like college scholarships or “community-based economic development programs that will empower families to be lifted out of the cycle of poverty.” 

Garland said this is an opportunity to “really pull those pieces together” in educating students, staff and members of the community that want to know about MCV’s history.

“There was a family resource council that was engaged to help the university to come up with ideas on how to acknowledge the remains that were found when the excavations were being done,” Garland said.

One of the recommendations of the legislation the General Assembly passed, House Bill 1980, is to establish scholarships for underrepresented minority students. Garland said this is one of the commission’s goals, and hopes that by the end of the 2023 spring semester, they will have completed their initial work. 

“We are really looking forward to having conversations with all the members of the commission, but especially representatives from the community, to help us to be thoughtful in our responses and then how we move forward,” Garland said.

Peter Wosh, the former director of the Archives and Public History program at New York University, was in charge of writing the 75-page report delving into MCV’s history. 

He started his research with MCV’s archives with the help of Jodi Koste, VCU’s head archivist, but he quickly had to turn to other sources due to a lack of records, according to Wosh.

“Their archives are a bit sketchy for the whole Antebellum period from 1847,” Wosh said. “Onwards, they have relatively few records.” 

Wosh said he found more of his information in the State Archives of Virginia as well as Hampden-Sydney College’s archive because MCV was originally part of Hampden-Sydney. Wosh also found information in the Dean’s account books because of the purchases made. 

“What I hadn’t really anticipated was the extent and the scope of participation between the university at the time really, and slavery itself in terms of the number of enslavers on the faculty, the extensive enslavement that was practiced by the Board of Trustees,” Wosh said. 

The Board of Visitors primarily consisted of enslavers and enslaved laborers who were used to manage their households and medical practices, even as experiments without their consent in clinical procedures and research, according to Wosh’s report. 

When MCV was going through financial problems, it rented slaves out to Chimborazo Hospital, a Civil War-era hospital for Confederate soldiers, according to Wosh. 

MCV’s use of slaves in their infirmary as well as for labor was what allowed many students to attend, as most MCV students in 1861 came from agricultural and farming backgrounds all over Virginia, according to Wosh.

“But in virtually all instances, their parents were major enslavers,” Wosh said. 

Tax lists and census data confirmed that MCV owned and rented “between four and eight enslaved laborers each year,” according to the report. “They cooked, cleaned, laundered, maintained buildings and grounds, nursed patients and aided physicians.” 

The Board of Visitors primarily consisted of enslavers and enslaved laborers who were used to manage their households and medical practices, even as experiments without their consent in clinical procedures and research, according to the report. 

Enslaved people were also used as “resurrectionists” to dig up dead bodies to be used as cadavers for medical students. 

“By the late 1850s, the college took in dozens of bodies per year, primarily from the nearby pauper’s field, the African American burial ground, and the local almshouse,” the report states. 

These resurrectionists were referenced in Chip Jones’ book, “The Organ Thieves,” which chronicles one of the first heart transplants done at MCV. VCU used it as the Common Book for the 2022 fall semester. 

The book is about Bruce Tucker, a Black man who suffered a head injury and was wrongfully declared brain dead. His heart was taken and used in a heart transplant for a white man without his or his family’s consent, according to a previous report from The Commonwealth Times. The operation was headed by MCV doctor Robert Lower, and done in an MCV hospital. 

Tucker and every enslaved person with a part in MCV’s history only recently came into the public eye, but Wosh said he hopes this report can help bring them the attention and respect they deserve. 

“They played key roles in building and buttressing institutions that still stand and flourish in the twenty-first century,” the report states. “Their lives deserve respectful and dignified treatment.”