Dear U.S. Public Health Service,

I write to this institution today because by some godforsaken chance, my name appeared on the same Google Search results page as your institution because of the word “deception.” Sometimes, healthcare workers use the term “benevolent deception.” However, benevolent deception would severely mischaracterize your actions, as eighteenth-century advertisements for runaway slaves and servants, i.e. eighteenth-century confidence men, would mischaracterize acts of resistance as deceit and deception.

 My name is Charles Roberts, and my former employer, John Holt, would call me a villainous and deceptive servant. He seems to be unoriginal with his diction, but who can blame him for that? It was me who was running his press and writing in his papers for years, so he’s become a bit rusty.

While you let men die painful and preventable deaths, some of you also promoted the egregiously racist idea that they deserved it as repentance for “wicked life-styles.” And you failed to see the implications of how your actions in the name of science have also have deleteriously effected black women and children. You researchers were in no rush to cure black bodies. Your disregard for human life and undervaluing of black men and women is not what I hoped for the future of the United States. I had hoped that black bodies would no longer be valued as merely disposable labor and research, but as valuable in their intrinsic humanity.

To add insult to injury, you chose to conduct your research at the Tuskegee Institute at Tuskegee University (a prestigious and historically black university), where the center location was chosen in hopes of providing jobs, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and training opportunities for young black scientists.

On the one hand, confidence men like myself used clothes, language, and trade skills to escape, disguise, and, manipulate, in order to escape from further exploitation. You researchers, on the other hand, targeted poor and educated populations, and further exploited them. Using incentives of free physical exams, hot meals, rides to the clinics, and burial stipends, you lured vulnerable volunteers to your research study with veiled risks and little reward.

Charles Roberts, from the grave