The Tuskegee experiments have largely gone unappreciated regarding their effect on the African American community, almost 40 years later.

In 1977, President Bill Clinton invited the eight survivors to the White House to formally apologize for one of the “most macabre clinical trials in American history.”

During this ceremony, Herman Shaw, one of the study participants, made these comments, “The wounds that were inflicted upon us cannot be undone. I’m saddened today to think of those who did not survive and whose families will forever live with the knowledge that their death and suffering was preventable. In order for America – black, red, white together – trusting each other, caring for each other and never allowing the kind of tragedy which has happened to us in the Tuskegee study to ever happen again.”

It is a part of our DNA to show, love, redemption, and forgiveness.