The U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS), working with the Tuskegee Institute, begins a study on syphilis with poor Black men in the South. It is called the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male." At the start of the study, there is no known treatment for syphilis.

Informed that they are being treated for “bad blood,” the men are told they are receiving free health care from the U.S. government. They are never taken through the standard protocol of informed consent, never told the actual name of the study, and never informed of the potentially life-threatening impact of the "treatments" they receive. They are also told that the study will last about six months, but it will go on for years.

The doctors have no intention of treating them for syphilis, as they wait for them to die so they can collect the data for the experiment from their autopsies. When penicillin becomes the standard treatment for syphilis, it will be withheld from the participants in order to prolong the study.

They are not told of the impacts of syphilis on themselves or their family members, and are not given the choice to quit once penicillin becomes available. A total of 600 Black men and their families will be impacted by the study until it is shut down in 1972 following public outcry and a class action suit from survivors.