New York fund apologizes for role in Tuskegee syphilis study
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For over 40 years, a foundation in New York has funded burial expenses for hundreds of Black men who died of syphilis in Alabama for academics to study the illness.
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A Black man included in a syphilis study has blood drawn by a doctor in Tuskegee, Alabama. (AP)
For over 40 years, beginning in the 1930s, a foundation in New York funded burial expenses for hundreds of Black men who died of syphilis in Alabama so that academics could study the illness. The payouts were critical to the victims' survivors at a time and place racked by poverty and bigotry.
However, the $100 checks were part of a larger plan.
To get the funds, widows or other loved ones had to agree to physicians slicing open the bodies of the deceased men for autopsies that would show the effects of a condition the victims were informed was "bad blood".
Fifty years after the research was exposed and ended, the Milbank Memorial Fund, the institution that gave the funeral payments, is formally apologizing to the descendants for its participation. The decision is motivated by America's racial reckoning in the aftermath of George Floyd's death by police in 2020.
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The apology, along with a monetary commitment to the Voices of our Fathers Legacy Foundation, will be given Saturday in Tuskegee during a meeting of children and other relatives of men who participated in the research.
The fund was established in 1905 by Elizabeth Milbank Anderson, a member of a rich and well-connected New York family.
It was one of the country's earliest private foundations. According to tax filings, the nonprofit foundation had around $90 million in assets in 2019 and a Manhattan headquarters on Madison Avenue. With an early emphasis on child welfare and public health, it now focuses on state-level health policy.
The fund's current president, Christopher F. Koller, said there's no easy way to explain or excuse what happened in the 1930s. Because of the "Tuskegee effect", some Black people in the United States still mistrust government health care generations later.
Koller told AP in an interview that "the upshot of this was real harm," adding that “it was one more example of ways that men in the study were deceived. And we are dealing as individuals, as a region, as a country, with the impact of that deceit."
The research included Lillie Tyson Head's late father, Freddie Lee Tyson. She is presently the president of the Voices of Our Fathers organization. Even though the apology comes 25 years after the US government apologized for the research to its final survivors, who have all since died, she termed it "a wonderful gesture and a wonderful thing."
According to Head, “It’s really something that could be used as an example of how apologies can be powerful in making reparations and restorative justice be real."
Head claimed she had no idea Milbank was involved in the study until Koller phoned her last autumn. The payments have been mentioned in academic papers and a few publications, but the descendants were not aware of them, according to her.
According to her, the news caught her off guard. Head's father abandoned the study years before it finished after growing dubious of the research and did not get any of the Milbank money, she added, but hundreds of others did.
Other renowned institutions, colleges such as Harvard and Georgetown, as well as the state of California, have admitted to their involvement in racism and slavery. Susan M. Reverby, a historian who produced a book on the study, investigated the Milbank Fund's participation at the fund's request. She stated that the apology might serve as a model for other organizations with links to systematic racism.
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“It’s really important because at a time when the nation is so divided, how we come to terms with our racism is so complicated,” she stated. “Confronting it is difficult, and they didn’t have to do this. I think it’s a really good example of history as restorative justice.”
Beginning in 1932, government medical staff in rural Alabama delayed treatment of unwitting Black males sick with syphilis in order for physicians to monitor the disease and dissect their corpses afterward. A total of 620 males were examined, with about 430 of them having syphilis. According to Reverby's research, Milbank paid a total of $20,150 for about 234 autopsies.
The research concluded in 1972, as revealed by The Associated Press, and the men sued, resulting in a $9 million settlement from which relatives are still pursuing the remaining payments, described in court papers as "relatively small".
Reverby discovered that the Milbank Memorial Fund became engaged in 1935 when the US surgeon general at the time, Hugh Cumming, requested the money, which was critical in persuading families to agree to the autopsy.
The financing was approved by a group of white males with tight links to federal health authorities but no awareness of Alabama conditions or the cultural norms of Black Southerners, who value respectful burials, according to Koller.
Koller added that “one of the lessons for us is you get bad decisions if … your perspectives are not particularly diverse and you don’t pay attention to conflicts of interest."
According to Reverby, the payouts grew less crucial as the Depression ended and more Black households could obtain funeral insurance. Milbank was initially named as a defendant in the men's complaint, but he was dropped and the group moved on from the incident.
Years later, works such as Reverby's 2009 book “Examining Tuskegee, The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy,” documented the fund's role. It wasn't until the death of Geoge Floyd that talks among Milbank staff began to reconsider the fund's position.
“Both staff and board felt like we had to face up to this in a way that we had not before,” he said.
Koller stated that the fund agreed to contribute an unknown sum to the Voices of our Fathers Legacy Foundation in addition to giving a public apology to a gathering of descendants.
According to Head, the funds would be used to provide scholarships to the offspring. The organization also intends to build a memorial at Tuskegee University, which functioned as a conduit for the money and had a hospital where the men were treated.
While times have changed since the funeral fees were initially granted over 100 years ago, Reverby maintains that there is no way to rationalize what occurred.
“The records say very clearly, untreated syphilis,” she stated. “You don’t need a Ph.D. to figure that out, and they just kept doing it year after year.”
