Photo credits: The New York Times
The Rosenwald Fund provided financial aid to the Alabama State Board of Health at Tuskegee, Alabama. In turn, the Alabama State Board of Health provided grants to foot the bill for a nefarious social experiment.
The monies from the Rosenwald Fund arrived on February 12, 1930. They were provided to assist in defraying the costs of syphilis research, which was conducted on African American males living in rural Georgia and Alabama who were injected with the disease.
This would mark the beginning of a four-decade-long investigation of syphilis without treatment called The Tuskegee Experiment of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.
Over the course of more than 40 years, more than 400 men were permitted to live with the sickness without receiving medical attention.
An unsavory investigation was conducted with the participation of representatives from a range of government organizations, including the Federal Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
After then, it was maintained a closely guarded secret until 1972, when the Washington Star newspaper broke the story.
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