Our Own Voices Live

07/18/2025

06/19/2025

African American History is American History

Imagine going to the hospital for help—and they take part of your body without asking. Then they make billions off of it… and never even say your name.

No, this isn’t a Netflix doc or a plot twist on Grey’s Anatomy.
This actually happened.

This is Henrietta Lacks.
A Black woman.
A mother.
A daughter.
A wife.
And the reason half the people reading this are alive, vaccinated, or walking around with scientific advancements in their bloodstreams.

She walked into Johns Hopkins in 1951—a time when Black patients were segregated, disregarded, and seen more as test subjects than people.
She came in with stomach pain.
She left behind something the world had never seen before.

Her cells didn’t die.
They didn’t fade.
They didn’t break down like everyone else’s.
They lived.
They multiplied.
They became the first “immortal cells” in human history.

The HeLa cells.
Named for her.
But for decades, never credited to her.

Doctors used those cells to:

– Create the polio vaccine
– Study cancer
– Understand fertility
– Develop in-vitro fertilization
– Test radiation and space travel
– And build pharmaceutical empires worth billions

But while science moved forward, Henrietta’s family was left behind.
Her children grew up in poverty.
Some without healthcare.
Some not even knowing what their mother had unknowingly given the world.

Her name wasn’t on the research.
Her photo wasn’t in the textbooks.
Her voice was never heard in the rooms where her cells were being discussed.

They called the cells “HeLa.”
But erased the woman who gave them life.

Let this sit with you:

Why is it so easy to take from Black women but so hard to credit them?
Why did they build the future of medicine from her body—but bury her memory?
Why do we call it “progress” when the price is paid in silence and stolen legacy?

This isn’t just a story about medicine.
It’s a story about consent.
About dignity.
And about how systems profit from the very people they refuse to honor.

Henrietta Lacks didn’t ask to become a cornerstone of modern science. But she did.

Not by choice—but by theft.
Not by legacy—but by force.

And now?

We owe her more than remembrance.
We owe her recognition.
We owe her justice.

So here’s what you do—
When someone brings up breakthroughs in cancer research or medical miracles… bring up Henrietta.
Say her name in your classrooms.
Drop it in your family group chat.
Mention it at your next doctor’s appointment.
Write it in the comments when people talk about scientific innovation like it floated down from heaven.

Because history didn’t forget her. It erased her. And it’s on us to write her back in.

Henrietta Lacks didn’t just change medicine—she changed the very question of who gets remembered.

Don’t let them forget again.

06/06/2025