TUSKEGEE, Ala. — Omar Neal often thinks back on the calculated betrayal of hundreds of Black men and how it still shapes so much about this rural Alabama community.
He remembers the mechanic who went from house to house fixing cars and the sharecropper who lived off a narrow dirt road. He thinks too of his uncle Freddie Lee Tyson, a carpenter, and how the betrayal shaped his life.
“These men believed so-called medical experts and were deceived,” said Neal, a lifelong resident of Tuskegee.
The name of the town evokes feelings of both pride and pain — for its legendary Black airmen and for the infamous government-backed healthcare study. For now, the legacy of the study, in which Black men with syphilis were left untreated for decades, stands front of mind for many contemplating whether to get a COVID-19 vaccine recommended by federal officials.
Neal’s uncle was among the more than 600 African American men from here who were enrolled under false pretenses in the deadly long-term health study coordinated and financed by the federal government beginning in the 1930s.