Black History Month Day 22: Medicine Has a Memory Black History Fact: Black Americans were subjected to medical experimentation without consent, including the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which continued until 1972. Trust is not broken overnight. Black history shows us that medicine has often been a site of harm rather than
In case any of my readers wondered if I would focus my newsletter on Black History Month for the entire month — it should now be very clear: YES. Hell yes. Because the moment you begin telling the truth about history, it refuses to stay politely inside a day or two
Black History Fact: The FBI’s COINTELPRO program targeted Black leaders and organizations in the 1950s–70s, surveilling, infiltrating, and destabilizing movements for racial justice. Black history reminds us that activism has always been monitored. Movements are labeled dangerous not because they are violent—but because they are effective. Surveillance
Black History Fact: Jazz, blues, rock, and hip-hop were created by Black artists, often while white performers profited more widely and were deemed more “marketable.” Black culture has always been influential—and exploited. Black history shows us how creativity flourishes even under constraint, and how that creativity is often stripped
Black History Fact: During the Civil Rights Movement, peaceful protesters were routinely arrested, beaten, surveilled, and labeled threats to public order. Now, history textbooks prefer to stage this period like a polite church picnic — brave people walked, sang, and the nation slowly felt better about itself. Curtains close. Applause. Democracy
Black History Fact: After Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, many school districts did not simply hesitate to integrate — they resisted it with planning, policy, and open defiance. Some communities closed entire public school systems rather than allow Black children to sit beside white children. Public education itself was
Black History Fact: Poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses were designed specifically to prevent Black Americans from voting after Reconstruction. Voting rights were not “lost.” They were stolen. Black history makes clear that barriers to voting were engineered with precision. The goal was never subtle. It was effective. The
Black History Fact: In 1968, just days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., more than 100 U.S. cities erupted in uprisings responding to decades of racial violence and inequality. America likes neat endings. A speech. A law. A moment we can point to and say, That’
Today the stores fill with roses that never grew in February and chocolate that never needed a season. We will write little notes that say “love you” because the calendar nudges us to remember tenderness. And at the same time, we sit in the middle of Black History Month — the
Black History Fact: Modern policing in the American South did not simply appear as a neutral civic institution. It evolved in part from organized slave patrols — armed groups empowered by law to monitor, control, and capture enslaved people, and to prevent gatherings, literacy, movement, and resistance. Those patrols were not
Black History Fact: Redlining, enforced by federal housing policies in the 20th century, systematically denied Black families access to mortgages and homeownership. Neighborhoods did not “naturally” segregate. They were engineered. Beginning in the 1930s, the federal government created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and later the Federal Housing Administration
Black History Fact: Black women were essential organizers of the Civil Rights Movement, yet were routinely excluded from leadership recognition and media coverage. Black women have always been at the center of change—and pushed to the margins of credit. They organized boycotts, built networks, sustained movements, and absorbed extraordinary