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The following year, the university successfully petitioned the Philadelphia Orphans’ Court to allow the burial on the basis that the identities of all but one of the Black Philadelphians were unknown.

In 1954, she was elected to the Prince George’s County Orphans’ Court, a forum to resolve disputes involving wills and estates but a position that didn’t require a law degree.

“As a young Jewish woman starting in the Orphans’ Court, she was breaking barriers at every opportunity.

Now the museum is petitioning the Orphans’ Court in Philadelphia to bury the 13 skulls at Eden Cemetery, a historically Black cemetery in the city.

Muhammad filed a formal objection with the Orphans’ Court saying as much.