TRUST THE VACCINE? The Tuskegee syphilis study poisoned Black trust in government.

There aren’t many African Americans who don’t know about the Tuskegee syphilis study. At some point, someone told us about the hundreds of Black men from rural Alabama who were forced to suffer from untreated syphilis.

They didn’t have to suffer. During the 40-year study, penicillin was found to be an effective treatment for the sexually transmitted disease. But the government deliberately withheld treatment in order to see what would happen.

It was done without the men’s knowledge and consent. In return, the government provided them with burial insurance. Long before President Bill Clinton apologized on behalf of the nation, the story was told to generations of Blacks, handed down from great-grandparents to grandparents to parents to children. It has long haunted African Americans. Now it has circled back to haunt America.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week approved the first vaccine for COVID-19. It is seen as a powerful counter to the virus that has killed more than 300,000 Americans and crippled the nation.

But it won’t work unless enough people take it to establish herd immunity. More than half of Blacks said they would not get the vaccine, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. That’s a huge problem for the government.

The Tuskegee story is not a fable from long ago. It happened from 1932 to 1972. And we know other stories, as well. There is the legacy of Henrietta Lacks, the Black woman who died of cancer in 1951 as scientists experimented with cells that were taken from her body without her knowledge.

And there was the era of 20th-century eugenics, where thousands upon thousands of Black women who went to state health facilities for routine medical procedures were sterilized without their knowledge.

These stories are as ingrained in African American culture as deeply as the historical narratives of slaves and sharecroppers. The details may have been altered over time as it went from one tongue to another, but the message has remained the same: “African Americans should never take a vaccine.” This fear has forced Black people to stay away from clinical trials and all types of medical studies, even if our community is ravaged by disease.

The reasoning is simple: “The government wants to experiment on Black people to see what could happen to white people. They don’t care if we get sick from it. They don’t care if we die.”

The Tuskegee study was proof that our government had no qualms about sacrificing us for the greater good of the nation. We always have been asked to give more than we receive.

America never particularly cared whether Black people decided to get a f lu shot. Though encouraged, protecting oneself from the f lu largely is considered a personal choice. Likewise, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ignored HIV/AIDS in the Black community for years during the early onset as it spread out of control.

But COVID-19 is different. Everyone needs to take the vaccine to rid the country of the virus and get the economy going again.

Suddenly, everybody is talking about the Black anti-vaccine problem. The government is scrambling to figure out how to get Black people to trust the safety of a COVID-19 vaccine that was quickly developed.

But the larger question is this: “How does America get Black people to trust America?” A public service ad by a Black celebrity won’t do it. Nor will a video showing the first African American president rolling up his sleeve to receive the vaccine.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, suggested that African Americans should be reassured because a Black woman, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, helped lead the development of the vaccine. African Americans lit into him on social media. While Fauci likely had good intentions, his words pointed to the government’s severe miscalculation of the depth of Black distrust.

Tuskegee is a story of deep betrayal, not just by the U.S. government but also by our own people who collaborated in this inhumane act. Both Black and White doctors perpetrated the syphilis experiment. It involved a historically Black university, the former Tuskegee Institute. More than 120 Black medical students helped conduct the study. African American doctors in the area agreed not to treat the men if they came in on their own.

America is asking Black people once again to put the past behind and look toward the future — for the country’s sake. Many of us will roll up our sleeves because we know that if we don’t, our people will continue to die from COVID-19 at higher rates than anyone.

The consequences of refusing to do what America asks are much steeper for Blacks than for others. But do not blame those who are too terrified to trust America. Trust must be earned. And America has given Black people little reason to believe anything it says.