Founded in 2013, the EMSW Project works to enact the recommendations of the Family Representative Council, a group that represents the descendant community in Richmond since the names and families of the people whose remains were excavated from the EMSW could not be identified. Issued in 2018, the recommendations for reparative justice prioritize ethical research, memorialization, and reburial of the ancestors with dignity. They also emphasize the importance of better understanding the broader history of relations between Richmond's medical institutions and the city's African American communities.

The Humanities Research Center's Health Humanities Lab has been supporting these efforts by recording and processing oral histories about the EMSW and about the Richmond community's memories of their interactions with the institutions that later became VCU Medical Center. These oral histories are publicly available in a VCU Library repository. We greatly appreciate the support of faculty and staff at the VCU Library for their help in making this archive possible.