Eunice Rivers Laurie
Junious Ricardo Stanton
During the month of March we have been sharing the stories of Women of African descent that have made significant contributions to the African Diasporan community and the world. Today however I want to focus on a controversial Sistah who was an active participant in an egregious “medical experiment” that went on for over forty years; one that qualifies as a crime against humanity. Many are familiar with the Tuskegee Experiment where African-American men suffering from syphilis were deliberately untreated so white doctors could observe the disease’s progression over forty years from the time of first contact with the men until their deaths. Keep in mind the government did not infect the men with syphilis they deliberately withheld available treatment (penicillin), deceived them about the nature of the “study” and callously allowed them to suffer all the effects of the disease until they died.
To aid them in their “research” (a euphemism for quackery and crimes against humanity) the Macon County Public Health Service hired a Black nurse named Eunice Rivers Laurie (1899-1986) to help coordinate the program. Eunice Verdell Rivers was born on November 12, 1899 in Early County Georgia. Her mother died when Eunice was fifteen. Her father worked his small farm and also in a saw mill to support Eunice and her two siblings. Both of her parents encouraged Eunice to get a good education. Her father sent her to live with a relative so she could attend a mission boarding school in Thomasville Georgia.
Her father Albert Rivers was a proud and fiercely independent man. When he discovered the mission school only had white teachers he pulled Eunice out and sent her to Tuskegee Institute which had a laboratory school staffed by Black teachers. Eunice attended and graduated from Tuskegee Institute’s (now university) School of Nursing in 1922. She was hired by the university to work in their Moveable School Project an innovative way to introduce poor, dispossessed rural African-American families to basic education, agricultural skills, home economics, health and hygiene.
In her work with the Moveable School Rivers functioned as a public health nurse. “Nurse Rivers focused primarily on the health needs of Black women and children, teaching basic health education, simple sanitation methods, and childcare. She also demonstrated cleanliness techniques to Alabama’s extensive network of midwives. At the time, she was one of only four Black public health nurses in the entire state. She also worked for the state’s Bureau of Vital Statistics and devised techniques for midwives to report births accurately. Nurse Rivers’ great skill was her non-judgmental understanding of the medical beliefs of rural Black Americans and her support of their dignity and individual needs in medical encounters. By 1931, however, the state had to cut its workforce, and Nurse Rivers lost her position. She was then hired as a night supervisor at Tuskegee’s John A. Andrew Hospital.”
https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2011/08/... Rivers worked during a time of virulent racial oppression within a system that denigrated all African-Americans, consigning them to a lesser socio-economic status. Rivers was offered a part time position in a project called A Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male in Tuskegee. She was influential and appreciated within the community because of her caring style, her willingness to work and her availability to the people she ministered to. “Nurse Rivers was integral to community life in Tuskegee. While working on the ‘study’, she was also employed in the maternal and child health clinics at the Institute’s hospital and taught in its nursing school. She was also active in the Red Cross and the Greater St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church in Tuskegee. Numerous awards testified to her nursing skills.” Ibid
Because Nurse Rivers was so well respected in the community, the whites used her to facilitate their nefarious project. She, knowingly or not, helped the whites dupe and abuse three hundred ninety-nine men, their families and adding insult to injury deceived them into signing away their bodies at death for autopsies and other “research”.
Like most Black people of her era Rivers faced a dilemma: how to make a living within an oppressively racist, patriarchal society. She loved being a nurse, she loved working with and helping her people, she was good at it and these qualities made her the ideal candidate to participate in this horrific project. Plus it was only part time, the rest of the time she could pursue her career as a public health official. “Her work on the Tuskegee Study, it must be stressed, occupied only about half of her time, leaving her free to devote the rest of her working days to bona fide public health assignments that greatly benefited the people she served. As she once put it, when she was not busy with the Tuskegee Study, I was minding my mommas, my old folks and my babies.(African-American families) throughout Macon County and the contiguous counties were indebted to Nurse Rivers for the vital public health work she performed in their communities, and they also had her to thank for many acts of personal kindness. The part of her career that she devoted to clinical work nurtured the caregiver in Nurse Rivers and made it possible for her to maintain a positive self-image.” Race Racism and The Law
https://racism.org/articles/basic-needs/he... What lessons can we learn from Nurse Eunice Rivers Laurie? Are her life experiences relevant to today’s world? Yes, even more so during this “pandemic”. Many health care and public health officials will be called upon to make decisions and choices that will impact the wellbeing of our community. Black people should be ever mindful and vigilant; especially those in the medical professions of the centuries long history of abuse by the white medical establishment of African-Americans in this country. We should be mindful of how they use good people like Nurse Laurie to carry out their nefarious agendas. We should be alert and do our own research so we don’t fall for their eugenics (population control) agendas no matter how humanitarian or progressive they may sound.
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Posted By: Junious Stanton
Friday, March 19th 2021 at 11:54AM
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