Slavery was more Horrible than You Know
Many folks, both black and white, think they know something about the horrors of slavery. They know little or nothing. Blacks were burned alive at the stake in East Texas at the rate of one per year for roughly 30 years. Blacks were hanged by vigilante mobs and their bodies photographed and sold as postcards in drugstores and barber shops. Black families were torn apart on the auction black for hundreds of years and Texas politicians what us to forget that or not teach public school students the ugly history of white terrorism. What happened to blacks after death is even more insane. Even after death, black bodies were buried in black graveyards, dragged to rivers for the alligators, or chopped up for hogs to eat on the plantation. What is generally not known is that black corpses were stolen from graveyards and sold to medical schools so that white doctors could learn about human anatomy.
According to Dr. Daina Berry, black adult bodies were sold to medical schools for twelve dollars, while “infants from birth to 8 years” sold for four dollars. Mothers and infant corpses were sold for fifteen dollars. Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion for freedom in 1831, was also mutilated after he was hung. He was beheaded and his skin was used to make a wallet(s). Nat Turner’s skull traveled across the country and was in the possession of various physicians for many years. Dr. Berry writes that immediately after his execution, “Witnesses note that Turner’s body was given to medical students (possibly from the University of Virginia or Winchester Medical School in Virginia) for dissection.” She goes on to report that, “A local doctor possessed his skeleton ‘for many years’; at some point, it was misplaced.” Several of the blacks that fought with John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, after their execution, were dug up from the cemetery and turned over to medical schools. One of the John Brown’s Black fighters was chopped up and fed to hogs on approximately October 16, 1859.
A racist plantation doctor, James Marion Sims, conducted horrible experiments on enslaved Black women, without anesthesia. Critics say Sims cared more about the experiments than in providing therapeutic treatment, and that he caused untold suffering by operating under the racist notion that Black people did not feel pain. Apologists for his behavior still submit papers in Medical journals excusing his actions by saying “he was just a man of his times.” He was a man brainwashed by his times and could not rise above the racism of his times—simply a stupid blind follower of white supremacy.
Today, we know three of the names of the female patients from Sims’s own records—Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey. The first one he operated on was 18-year-old Lucy, who had given birth a few months prior and was unable to control her bladder. During this medical procedure, patients were completely naked and positioned on their knees and bent forward onto their elbows so their heads rested on their hands. Records from the doctor say that Lucy endured an hour-long surgery, screaming in agony, as other doctors watched. She eventually became extremely ill due to his use of a sponge to drain the urine away from the bladder, which led her to contract blood poisoning. Think you know about slavery? Now you know why calling slavery “involuntary relocation” is sick and insane, but is being attempted by white supremacists at the Texas State Board of Education.
