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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, FEB 5–11, 2025  
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February 3, 2025
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_ Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis. Philly Garment Workers Shut
It Down. From Bad to Worse for Unions. Hollywood Gives Racism a Big
Boost. “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been . . .” Petition Denied,
But Not for Long. _

Racist Medicine’s Nadir,

 

_FEBRUARY 5 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY_ of the deplorable conclusion to
a four-decades-long racist experiment conducted by the U.S.
government.

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male was started
in 1932 by the U.S. Public Health Service and was only terminated
after 40 years because it was uncovered and exposed by Associated
Press reporter Jean Heller.

The “study” – which was actually a blatantly unethical
experiment using human subjects – monitored the health of men with
syphilis infections, but did not treat them for syphilis or even
inform them of the nature of the study. When the experiment’s
subjects died, they were autopsied to determine whether syphilis had
caused or contributed to their deaths. By design, all of the study’s
600 subjects were Black men, most of them impoverished sharecroppers
in Macon County, Alabama.

Heller’s article was immediately front-page news in New York and
Washington. Many public officials expressed outrage at the experiment
and the federal government’s responsibility for it. Members of the
public and even some public officials said the experiment was worse
than any conducted on prisoners of the Third Reich. The Public Health
Service (which had become part of the Centers for Disease Control, or
CDC) quickly shut it down.

The abrupt shut-down made no provision for the experiment’s
surviving subjects. One subject soon filed a class-action suit
demanding $3 million for each of the experiment’s victims, a total
of $1.9 billion. On Feb. 5, 1975, after three years of litigation, the
suit was settled when the federal government agreed to pay $9 million,
five percent of the amount requested, or $37,500 for each of the
experiment’s surviving subjects and $15,000 for the estate of each
subject who had
died. [link removed]

_PHILLY GARMENT WORKERS SHUT IT DOWN_

FEBRUARY 6 IS THE 115TH ANNIVERSARY of the end of a successful 7-week
strike, which began in 1909, by some seven thousand female garment
workers in Philadelphia. Despite the city government’s complete
support for the employers, manifested by arresting hundreds of
picketers, the strikers and the International Ladies Garment Workers
Union prevented the employers from maintaining more than a small
fraction of their usual production. In the end, the employers were
forced to accede to most of the strikers’
demands. [link removed]

_FROM BAD TO WORSE FOR UNIONS_

FEBRUARY 7 IS THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY of the publication of a government
report that sent shivers through U.S. organized labor and its
supporters. The 1985 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
showed that total union membership had fallen by 13.4 percent since
1980, which was the last time BLS had reported on union membership. 

No one was surprised that union membership had fallen, but many were
shocked that the rate of loss was now greater than it had ever been
since it began in 1955.

Union efforts to slow the decline in membership beginning in 1985 had
noticeable success, but they did not come close to causing membership
to increase, with the result that union membership is very
substantially lower than it was in
1985. [link removed]
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_HOLLYWOOD GIVES RACISM A BIG BOOST_

FEBRUARY 8 IS THE 110TH ANNIVERSARY OF the premiere showing of The
Birth of a Nation, an infamously racist film, which was, not
coincidentally, the first film to be screened inside the White House,
at the behest of the famously racist President Woodrow Wilson.

The 1915 film used never-before-seen cinematic techniques, invented by
its director, D.W. Griffith, to appear as accurate depictions of real
events. It purports to show the development of the slave trade in
Africa, followed by the growth of plantations in the South. It vividly
depicts the fighting in the Civil War, and the following years of
Reconstruction, during which the Ku Klux Klan mounted a campaign of
murderous terror to destroy the multi-racial governments that existed
briefly in the South. Griffith presents the Reconstruction governments
to have been corrupt to the point of depravity and the Klan as
performing a heroic service by destroying them. 

The combination of Griffith’s unprecedented ability to produce the
impression of reality and the audiences’ unfamiliarity with such
artful camera-work gave many people the impression they were seeing
events as they actually occurred. It left millions of people convinced
that slavery had been benign, that Reconstruction failed because of
Freedmens’ corruption, and that the Klan’s intervention was an act
of heroism. It is almost certainly the most explicitly racist feature
film ever made in the
U.S. [link removed] 

_“ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN . . .”_

FEBRUARY 9 IS THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY of the 1950 speech that launched
Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting career and that gave the English
language a new word: McCarthyism. For more information, visit 

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_PETITION DENIED, BUT NOT FOR LONG_

FEBRUARY 10 IS THE 245TH ANNIVERSARY of a challenge to taxation
without representation by Afro-American Paul Cuffee, who petitioned
the Massachusetts government in 1780 to either stop taxing him or give
him the right to vote. 

Cuffee’s petition was denied, but not for long. Only three years
later the new Massachusetts constitution gave the same rights and
privileges to all males in the
state. [link removed]

For more People's History, visit
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* Tuskegee Study
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* Birth of a Nation
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