Month: September 2021

The Tuskegee Experiment (1990)

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, also known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American Male, U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, or Tuskeegee Experiment, was a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The purpose of this study was to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis; the African-American men in the study were told they were receiving free health care from the federal government of the United States.

This story is an example (one of numerous historical examples) of why Black Americans do not trust the US Medical system. In late 2020, the American medical system has produced a COVID 19 vaccine for distribution in 2021, and the majority of the front line (essential) workers are people of color. Will there be another ‘experiment’ on essential workers like there was on essential field workers in the South in the early 20th century? History has a way of repeating itself.

This is an edited version of the controversial documentary, “The Liberators: Fighting on 2 Fronts”, released in 1992. It was met with criticism almost immediately by white pundits, historians, and even Jews, because of alleged inaccuracies about Black soldiers being among the ‘liberators’ of Buckenwald and Dachau concentration camps. This documentary tried to show that Jews and Blacks had a common enemy, racism, especially during WWII, but it turned out that white american racism was too much for this documentary to stand, thus in early 1993, it was ‘recalled’ (withdrawn from public viewing). I was fortunate to record it on VHS in 1992, when it first came out, and I edited out all of the parts pertaining to the holocaust, and left the meat of the documentary, which was: Black Americans facing brutal racism in the military, and at home during World War II. Black Americans fighting for American freedom, and yet the very people they are fighting for……are the ones who want to restrict their freedom.

The Last Poets are several groups of poets and musicians who arose from the late 1960s African-American civil rights movement’s black nationalism. The name is taken from a poem by the South African revolutionary poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who believed he was in the last era of poetry before guns would take over. The original users of that name were the trio of Abiodun Oyewole, Gylan Kain, and David Nelson. The Original Last Poets formed on May 19, 1968 (Malcolm X’s birthday), at Marcus Garvey Park, and they came together as a group at the 1969 Harlem writers’ workshop known as East Wind. E. Pluribus Unum was from their 4th Album, Chastisement, in 1972. The lyrics tell a pretty deep story/background about the AMERICAN DOLLAR BILL.