The Smithsonian Institution in the United States, the largest museum complex in the world, preserves more than 200 brains of African Americans and Indigenous peoples collected without permission to promote racist theories in the early 20th century, according to research by The Washington Post published this Monday. .

The Washington Post spent a year examining the collection of 30,700 bones and human remains at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, including 255 brains.

The call “racial brain collection” was started in 1903 by Czech-born Smithsonian researcher Aleš Hrdličkawho viewed whites as superior and collected human remains to promote false theories of anatomical differences between races.

Those organs are kept in a building of the museum in Maryland.

60% of human remains were collected between 1903 and 1943, period when Hrdlička was head of the Department of Anthropology at the United States National Museum, the forerunner of today’s National Museum of Natural History.

Hrdlička (1869-1943) kept bodies in the backyard of the Smithsonian that he bought from hospitals, morgues and medical schools.

Of the 74 brains the researcher collected from the Washington area, 50 are classified by race, of which 35 correspond to African American people.

The researcher was “seen as an expert in race, evolution and human variations and believed that collecting body parts would help discover the origins of humans in America,” explains The Washington Post.

During the 40 years that Hrdlička headed the anthropology department, a position he held until his death, he organized an international network of anthropologists, scientists, doctors and professors to collect human remains, the paper said.

no family leave

Most of the remains were removed from cemeteries, battlefields, hospitals and morgues in more than 80 countries without families’ consent by investigators who looted graves or preyed on those with no close relatives.

The investigation by The Washington Post also revealed that the Smithsonian is facing a long delay when it comes to returning the remains to their descendants.

Of the brains in the collection, only four have been returned.

While the paper was doing its research, the Natural History Museum hired two people to investigate the administration and return of human remains.

Smithsonian director Lonnie Bunch III, the first African-American to lead the institution, apologized last April for the organization’s past collection of human bodies and remains.