In downtown Augusta, Georgia, construction crews renovating the former Medical College of Georgia made a discovery that should’ve been impossible to miss for more than a century: dozens of boxes of human bones buried beneath a dirt basement floor—men, women, and children, dating back to the 1800s. The explanation was as old as American medical education itself: before cadavers could be obtained legally, schools relied on grave robbing—and in Augusta, that work fell to one man whose name still carries a chill. Grandison Harris, an enslaved “porter” forced into the role of resurrection man, became the most notorious body-snatcher tied to Cedar Grove Cemetery, the city’s burial ground for Black and poor residents.

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