Visiting Henrietta Lacks' Past in Turner Station - Entrepreneur Generations

Like thousands of other people, I immensely enjoyed Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It's a story of America, about race, class, exploitation, and science, and the book -- which I haven't read since around the time it was published in 2010, though it's due for a re-reading -- offers up the story of one of the important figures in medical history; Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year old mother of five who was ravaged by cervical cancer when Johns Hopkins Hospital unwittingly drew her cells and used them for experimentation. These cells which uniquely were able to replicate rapidly and survive for long periods of time, and led to several breakthroughs in science. Hospitals have made millions of dollars off of these cells, yet her family didn't know about it for years, and struggle to maintain her legacy while also struggling to get medical care themselves.

The recent Oprah Winfrey film -- which I thought was a quality piece of filmmaking, and thought Winfrey was really good -- is rejuvenating some interest in Lacks, including in me. I've been more and more interested in recent years in housing histories. Here's my entry finding Leon Day's childhood home here in Baltimore, and my entry about finding Al Kaline's home.  I've lived in Baltimore for 16 years but have barely heard of Turner Station, let alone visited it. I also enjoyed Lisa Snowden-McCray and J.M. Giordano's recent photos and essay about Turner Station in City Paper.  decided to take an afternoon and visit.

We began plugging our trip by setting the GPS for 713 New Pittsburg Ave., the address we found online for Henrietta Lacks' old house, located in Turner Station, a small African-American community tucked off in the southeastern corner of Dundalk (which is mostly a white area of Baltimore County). Back around World War I, housing was built around Dundalk for the white workers of such factories as Bethlehem Steel, but not the black workers; thus, the African Americans workers built their own neighborhood, Turner Station. Most of its residents worked in the steel factory, including Lacks' husband, Day Lacks.

From the Baltimore City Canton area, you take Dundalk Avenue about three miles until south until taking a slight right onto Mains Road, where you see a very welcoming sign:



Driving through the neighborhood to 713 New Pittsburg Ave, you get the sense that it doesn't look much different than when Lacks and her family lived here. The neighborhood is clean; the small rowhouses are made of unadorned dark brown brick.

Lacks and her family lived in Turner  from 1941 until her death in 1951. The family already had two children when moving to the house -- Lawrence (b. 1935) and Elsie (1939-1955). While living in Turner Station, the family added three more children: Sonny (b. 1947), Deborah (who once predicted Oprah would play her in the film version, and was correct, 1949-2009), and Joseph (later he takes the name Zakariyya Bari Abdul Rahman, b. 1950). Here's the house:



According to Turner Station Historian Courtney Speed (more on her later), the famous photo of Henrietta Lacks that graces the cover of the book was taken right on this front porch:

























A historical marker was placed on the house in 2009, with the words written by Jeri Lacks-Whye, Henrietta Lacks' granddaughter.

Words written by Jeri Lacks-Whye: Henrietta Lacks "Life Goes On" August 1, 1920 - October 4, 1951:
Henrietta Pleasant was born on August 1, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. Henrietta married David Lacks, and in this union, five beautiful children were born. Henrietta's family moved to Turner Station, Maryland at 713 New Pittsburgh Avenue. Henrietta's husband, David, started working at Bethlehem Steel, a factory that provided opportunities and hopes to African American men and their families during World War II.

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks went to the Johns Hopkins Hospital to be treated for an unknown illness. After several visits to the hospital, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Her life was cut short at an early age, but in her passing she unwittingly became a medical miracle. Henrietta Lacks is responsibile for the phenomenal cell line "HeLa" (the first two letters of her first and last name). For the first time in human history, human cells could be grown and infinitely replaced outside the human body. HeLa cells are responsible for medical advances such as the development of the polio vaccine, gene mapping, cloning, and cancer treatments, and they were the first to go into space to determine how the human body responds to zero gravity environments. HeLa cells are still being used worldwide in laboratories.

A few from farther away:


And a few with a couple of big heads in it (myself and my friend/colleague Amber Phelps):


After visiting Henrietta's old house, we drove around the neighborhood a little bit. The childhood home of such luminaries as Kweisi Mfume and Kevin Clash (Elmo creator and voice artist) are here, but it's mostly a quiet and clean neighborhood with lots of nice touches, like a baseball field overlooking the water:


Resourceful kids making a homemade basketball hoop:


Playgrounds:


Turner Station Park was serene:


The best part of the visit is yet to come, though. On the way out of Turner Station, we fortuitously passed two older Black women who were wearing Henrietta Lacks t-shirts. I recognized one of them as Mrs. Speed, the local Henrietta Lacks and Turner Station historian I'd read about in the recent City Paper article linked above. From that article, I know that Mrs. Speed owns a beauty salon and barber shop, and is a force to be reckoned with in terms of preserving Henrietta Lacks' legacy. Her goal is to create a museum and living classroom in the community.

We introduced ourselves to her, and she revealed that they had just had a meeting that morning with the rest of the Henrietta Lacks Legacy Group, the organization she founded twenty years ago to preserve Henrietta's legacy. We had just missed Henrietta's grandson, she told us. Then, she invited us into her closed beauty shop for an oral tour of Turner Station.

Mrs. Speed, founder of the Henrietta Lacks Legacy Group

Below, Amber checks out Mrs. Speed's shops. Mrs. Speed (who is in Skloot's book; here's her Schmoop page: http://ift.tt/2sN5Lb9) says the Lacks kids have lifetime free haircuts with her.

Notice the Henrietta Lacks book cover in the window.

Mrs. Speed's beauty salon.

Towncenter and church:

The flier on the right was for the showing of the Henrietta Lacks film at the community center.

A copy of Deborah Lacks' funeral pamphlet

Mrs. Speed -- who would later attribute our finding of her as all part of "God's plan," a common attribution from her -- was a wealth of information. She shared stories about upcoming luncheons and celebrations and about the upcoming unveiling of a street and signs in honor of Henrietta Lacks. She expressed some disappointment that Oprah Winfrey is on the cover of the new version of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and, instead of Henrietta Lacks, the actress who plays her is on the cover.

Mrs. Speed told us how the filmmakers of the 1997 BBC Documentary, The Way of All Flesh, came to her and she had never heard of Henrietta Lacks at that point. Their visit inspired what has been a big passion over the last twenty years: focusing attention on Lacks. She described meeting Rebecca Skloot, and her work with the Henrietta Lacks Foundation over the years.

She also shared that despite objections of the community, Family Dollar came in and razed a building at the doorstep of Turner Station at Dundalk and Mains Avenue. Her dream has been to put a museum, restaurant, and meeting place there, but she learned in a newspaper article about Family Dollar coming in. Turner Station has lost its schools and much of its industries, and she wants the area to survive on tourism, something that still is her dream.

But her focus returned to the Lacks family: her concern for Sonny, who is a survivor of two strokes, and Zakariyaa, who is in a rehab facility. Both struggle with medical care, an irony when their mother has provided so much to the medical community. She liked the movie, she said, and hopes Oprah might come host a showing of the film at an upcoming community event.

You can find out more about the Henrietta Lacks Legacy Group here: http://www.hlacks.com/. Amber and I both joined for the $10 annual membership.

The much-bemoaned Family Dollar opening up across from the welcome sign of Turner Station

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2tmlBGF Visiting Henrietta Lacks' Past in Turner Station - Entrepreneur Generations

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