Historical Bravery
- Good Morning America anchor and breast cancer survivor Robin Roberts tells the incredible story of her courageous fatherwho was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corpsin a new documentary on the History Channel. “Forever grateful to my father.”
- The Tuskegee Experiment and the betrayal of African-Americans is what caused the community to distrust the medical field, which still lingers today.
- Dr. Otis Brawley from Johns Hopkins University told SurvivorNet of the African-American community’s continued mistrust in the medical field. “Many doctors, many hospitals ask, how can we get trust from the community for the COVID virus and for this pandemic. The answer is, you should have started 20 years ago.”
ABC’s Robin Roberts’ father was one of the Airmen, the first Black aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps, which eventually became the U.S. Air Force. The Tuskegee Airmen have been the subject of movies and documentaries, and while there are remarkable stories of their bravery in combat, it is medical experiment that the government conducted on these men that, among some Black people, continues to engender a level of mistrust for doctors and healthcare.
Read More“Forever grateful to my father and his fellow #tuskegeeairmen for their valor and courage,” the TV personality writes on her Instagram, featuring a photo of the two embracing. The film is produced by Rock’n Robin Productions, Robin’s full-service broadcast/digital production company focused on producing inspiring content that she started in 2014. “The Tuskegee Airmen’s bravery, courage, and impressive performance helped encourage the eventual integration of the U.S. armed forces,” the History Channel writes in one of their posts.
The first Tuskegee class began training in 1941, and at the time, less than 4,000 African Americans were reportedly serving in the military, and “only twelve African-Americans had become officers,” according to the National World War II Museum. Col. Roberts, a New Jersey native, died in 2004 in Biloxi, MS at 81. His obituary from the Houston Chronicle states that he had received his Masters Degree from Tuskegee Institute, and was a graduate of the 44K class of the Tuskegee Airmen.
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“We were men of valor and courage ready and able for combat,” Robin reads in a video post from a letter written by her father. “My daddy taught me this about dealing with fear. When fear knocks? Let faith answer the door.” She starts to talk about her father as a teenager. “Nineteen years old? Going down to Alabama to be a pilot? When so many people didn’t want that to happen, he didn’t let fear get in his way.”
“The term ‘The Negro Experiment’ was not used by the Tuskegee Airmen,” she continues reading. “We did not view our lives in the Air Force as an experiment, but as our God-given opportunity and our rights as American citizens, to use our talents to glory, to God, and our country.” Roberts, in tears, thanks her dad at the end of the video.
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Bravery and Letting Go of Fear
Like father like daughter. Roberts has evidently taken after her father, as these messages that he passed down about faith and letting go of fear are messages she often speaks about on her Monday Motivation Instagram videos, (and really almost every day of the week) such as “guard your heart from negativity” and “make sure you test positive for faith.”
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The Tuskegee Experiment
Many African-Americans have a distrust in medicine largely because of the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male" a study that ran from 1932-1972 where more than 600 African-American men in Alabama were enrolled by the U.S. Health Service, but were never told what the study was about and were never given the proper treatment to cure the disease. In 1997, President Bill Clinton apologized on behalf of the nation. “They were betrayed.”
“At the Tuskegee experiment, men who had syphilis were part of a study,” Dr. Kathie-Ann Joseph at NYU Langone Health told SurvivorNet in a previous interview. “During the study they were not given the appropriate treatment but yet there actually was a treatment for syphilis, penicillin. And so it didn’t come out until many decades later that the government had access to penicillin and these men could have been treated and they weren’t. They went on to have all the side effects from syphilis, which are quite debilitating.”
African-Americans and Medicine Today
Many African-Americans to this day are understandably still leery of the medical field. Dr. Otis Brawley from Johns Hopkins University previously talked to SurvivorNet about African-Americans’ distrust in medicine that still lingers today, during the time of COVID. “Many doctors, many hospitals ask, how can we get trust from the community for the COVID virus and for this pandemic,” he said. “The answer is, you should have started 20 years ago.”
Dr. Brawley talked about trust in medicine. “So trust is incredibly important in medicine. Trust is something that you gain over a long period of time. It can be lost quite quickly, but it is earned over a very long period of time.” The Professor of Oncology also talked about an exchange that he had had with one of his students about a patient of theirs who had COVID. “Their concern if they go into this clinical trial, they’re going to be randomized to the placebo and some white person will get the active drug.” It’s an important issue to consider. Trust comes from patients believing that their best interest is at heart.
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