We Helped, Too

 Justin Walton

Professor Harris

English 2016 - 44378

3 December 2024

We Helped Too

My major project idea is the focus of Afrofuturism on medicine. What inspired me to do this project is the film, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which is a film about Henrietta Lacks sister and her point of view of what happened to Lacks during and after her cancer battle. It opened my mind to see what other African American people helped in the development of medicine. We are all taught about the great things white people do in each field not just the medical field. I never knew the impact African American people had on the medical field. We need to give African American people their thanks like Henrietta Lacks, Dr. Sebi, and Dr. Charles R. Drew just to name a few. 

Henrietta Lacks born on August 1, 1920, was a regular black woman who one day had pain in her vaginal area. When she went to the doctor, they discovered a bump inside her vaginal area. They diagnosed her with cervical cancer. Lacks started to get worse and worse when finally she was moved to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Without her family’s consent, the doctors there decided to run tests and operations. They collected Lacks DNA and cells without her family's knowledge and discovered that her cells could heal other diseases. So, they used Lacks cells and created pills and other medicines. Back then, this practice was normal even though it was illegal, John Hopkins Hospital made millions of dollars off of Lacks cells and her family did not receive one cent. We are using Lacks cells as we speak, in every pill and medicine in America and maybe other countries as well. Henrietta Lacks eventually died on October 4, 1951, she was 31 years old. 

Alfredo Darrington Bowman, also known as Dr. Sebi, was born on November 26, 1933. He was a healer and herbalist and was not a real doctor. He believed that mucus and acidity caused disease. He created a plant-based diet that he believed would cause weight loss and lower your chances of getting cancer or other health diseases. His method was to maintain the acid levels in your body by controlling the foods and alkaline you put in your body. It was some claims that his methods cured Aids and Leukemia. Even though he was not an actual doctor his methods were working, it was claimed that the government had him killed to suppress secrets because he died on August 6, 2016, in police custody.  

Dr. Charles R. Drew was born on June 3, 1904, he is famous for the nickname “Father of the Blood Bank”. While working at Freedman’s Hospital, his methods made it possible for us to restore blood longer. At first, we could only store blood for a couple of days max. The method was to remove plasma from the blood and use the plasma for transfusions. He would go on to win awards for this method and create one of the first blood banks in the US. In World War II, he was asked by the US to help maintain the Red Cross blood bank. He later resigned to stand up for black people when white people found out they would cross white people's blood with black people's blood. He then became the first African American surgeon to be on the American Board of Surgery examiner. Without him, we probably wouldn’t have the blood supply to treat patients. 

Why we didn’t learn about these people in school? These African Americans have helped medicine in so many ways. Without them, America today probably wouldn’t be the same. It is many more African Americans that have hugely helped society and more African Americans continue to help society in different avenues, not just medically. Most people don’t even know about these people and the sacrifices these people made just to help everybody out. We need to bring attention to what black people have done to help America out just like they do with white people.

This picture is an honor to a couple of the people I mentioned above. The long red lines are my interpretation of veins and representing the blood going in and out from touching the world, this was for Dr. Charles R. Drew. The dots on the arms represent cells for Henrietta Lacks. The reason I wrote We Helped TOO and the different shade of people touching the world was to bring attention of black people changing the world.

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