THE CASE OF “MARCELLUS” : A SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT

Irony and happenstance occur sometimes when you least expect it. Not too long after a trip from Montgomery and Tuskegee, Alabama I spoke with my co-worker and she discussed how her father’s dementia was getting worse. At this point he had been missing for days and a silver alert was activated. For the sake of confidentiality and anonymity we will identify her father as Marcellus. After retaining her father’s medical records during a visit in 2019, she noticed something shocking. It read “Pt (patient) exposed at birth due to experimentation in African American males in the past. Patient reports being treated at the age 12.” Marcellus was part of a non-disclosed experiment as a child. Unfortunately, Marcellus and family had no autonomy over the fact of the matter, subject to whatever local and national health officials wanted to do. Marcellus grew up in a small town on the eastern coast of North Carolina in the 1930’s-1950’s before leaving for the military.

The eastern coast of NC has always had a bountiful number of Africans Americans due to the institution of slavery. It is documented that formerly enslaved individuals in the region often crossed into Union troop occupied areas seeking to gain their freedom. These men served in the North Carolina African American Union regiments — the Thirty-fifth United States Colored Infantry, the Thirty-sixth United States…