Читать книгу The Tuskegee Syphilis Study - Fred Gray - Страница 8

When President Clinton, in a ceremony at the White House on May 16, 1997, addressed five elderly African American men—ages 89 to 109—and the family members of others who could not be present, he brought a symbolic resolution to one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. medical history.

The President of the United States looked these men in the eyes and said:

The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens. . . . The American people are sorry—for the loss, for the years of hurt. You did nothing wrong, but you were grievously wronged. I apologize and I am sorry that this apology has been so long in coming.

As attorney for the participants in what became known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, I was deeply moved. Yes, in one sense it was true what the critics were saying, that the President’s apology was “too little and too late.” Yet for these surviving men and family members, and for the conscience of the nation, it could never be too late to make amends for a terrible injustice. When someone hurts you, their telling you that they are sorry for what they did is a healing act. This is no less true when it is your government that has committed the wrong. World history teaches us that governments rarely admit moral culpability for their wrongful actions.

And what had the United States government done that was so wrong? Put in its simplest terms, the government used 623 men as human guinea pigs in a misguided forty-year medical experiment. That in itself would have been bad enough. The moral and ethical injury was compounded by the fact that all of these men were African American, predominantly poor and uneducated, and were deliberately kept in the dark about what was happening to them.

It is pointless to try to weigh one person’s suffering against another’s, and I am not for a moment equating the Tuskegee Syphilis Study with the horrors committed in the name of “science” by Nazi doctors against Jews at Dachau and other places during World War II, but the principle is the same. The Nuremberg trials against Nazi war criminals resulted in a set of standards under which the civilized world agreed that human beings would not be used as research animals and that doctors would never forget that their first duty is to heal their patients. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study reiterates the necessity for commitment to these ideals.

As an American citizen, it shames me to realize that the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which began in 1932, continued under the supervision of U.S. government officials and highly trained medical professionals until 1972, more than two decades after the Nuremberg trials.

Thus, as I sat on the front row in the East Room of the White House on a warm May 16, 1997, I felt the President’s apology on behalf of the American people was a significant step in the right direction. Observing the ceremony, I reaffirmed my commitment to help ensure that the lessons of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study were widely known and that some lasting good will come out of the tragic situation.

This book tells the inside story, the real story, of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the lawsuit that eventually brought some compensation to the Study victims and survivors, and the events culminating in the White House apology. This book also explains the plans to create a prominent memorial and research center in Tuskegee, Alabama, as a permanent legacy of the experiment and of the rich history and culture of the area.

I wrote this book because God placed me in a position to do so. My first book, Bus Ride To Justice, told how I became a civil rights lawyer after growing up in segregated Montgomery, Alabama. My hard-working mother and my supportive community encouraged me to get a college education and then go to law school, even though I had to leave my home state to find a law school that would admit Negroes, as we were then called. After graduating from Case Western Reserve Law School, I could have taken a job in Cleveland, Ohio, but I returned to Alabama, determined to “destroy everything segregated I could find.” At the age of twenty-three, I became one of only two African American attorneys in Montgomery. One of my first clients was Rosa Parks, who was arrested after she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated city bus. Subsequently, I became the attorney for the Montgomery Bus Boycott and its inspired leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I worked with Martin King, Rosa Parks, E. D. Nixon, and other giants of what mushroomed into the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1955 and 1972, I filed dozens of successful lawsuits to desegregate schools, housing, transportation, places of employment, and other areas of public life. In the mid-1960s I moved my residence forty miles up the road to Tuskegee, Alabama, and in 1970 I became one of the first two African Americans elected to the Alabama legislature since Reconstruction.

Meanwhile, I continued a busy practice in both civil rights and more routine legal matters. I was also a full-time minister in the Church of Christ. I was involved in the community and, I believe it is fair to say, was probably the best-known African American attorney in Alabama.

Yet, until the Tuskegee Syphilis Study became public knowledge through news reports in 1972, I was unaware of the experiment that had existed in my community for forty years. As far as the general public was concerned, the study had been kept a total secret. Nevertheless, when one of the men involved in the study approached me, I immediately recognized the seriousness of what had been done. The man rightfully felt, based on what was being reported in the media, that he had been mistreated and he wanted me to sue whoever was responsible. Consequently, I filed the lawsuit and with the help of my colleagues eventually won a settlement on behalf of all the participants in the study.

Over the years, I remained in close contact with many of the surviving participants. I included a chapter on the case in Bus Ride To Justice, which was published in 1995. Then, in 1997, the Home Box Office cable television company presented the dramatic film Miss Evers’ Boys, which was based on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Many of the men involved in the study were deeply offended by this movie, which they felt misrepresented them and the facts of the study. In any case, this movie and a stage play of the same name brought the case back into the media spotlight.

Over a period of time, many people, including myself, realized that even though there had been a settlement in the lawsuit on behalf of the study victims, and the study itself had been ended, there were still unresolved issues that should be addressed. Gradually, the idea emerged for a public apology from the federal government to the victims of the study, including surviving participants and the families of those who had died. For several months, my late wife and I worked together on events which led to the Presidential apology.

Now, using case files, personal knowledge, and interviews and statements of numerous people involved in various aspects of the Study, I have compiled a record which I hope will be compelling and useful reading for students, teachers, researchers, and anyone interested in understanding why and how such an episode could have happened. This book has been written in the hope that the past will not be forgotten and that this type of occurrence will never happen again.

It has been said that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. I love my country, and I believe that, through the help of God, the long pendulum of history is slowly swinging in the direction of justice and equality. Nonetheless, the history of African Americans has been too painful to repeat, so we had best remember and remember well.

Fred D. Gray

Tuskegee, Alabama