Henrietta Lacks and the Lacks Plaza Statue: A Celebration of 40 Years of Life in Roanoke, Virginia
Ron Lacks, Henrietta’s grandson, said “it was an honor just to come down here” at the conference. He lauded Roanoke for actually working with Lacks’ family and estate to design the statue.
The statue will replace a monument of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. City officials voted to remove the monument after its vandalization during the height of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. The vice-mayor and Harrison Museum of African American Culture are working to raise funds to replace the monument.
The statue and virtual reality documentary about the history of the town will be paid for through the $183,700 raised by the initiative.
“This beautiful woman was born Aug. 1, 1920, right here in Roanoke, Virginia,” White-Boyd said at a press conference on Monday, where Lacks’ family members were also present. We want to honor her and celebrate her.
Lacks, a Black woman having radium treatments for her cancer at John Hopkins Hospital, was sent to a lab for removal of her cancer tissue without her consent. Cancer researcher George Gey used Lack’s tissue to cultivate a line of cells that are still used in medical research today. The hospital says on its website that while “the collection and use of Henrietta Lacks’ cells in research was an acceptable and legal practice in the 1950s, such a practice would not happen today without the patient’s consent.”
The cell line produced from Lacks’ cells, called HeLa cells, allowed scientists to experiment and create life-saving medicine, including the polio vaccine, in-vitro fertilization, and gene mapping. They’ve helped advance cancer and AIDS research.
“In honouring Henrietta Lacks, WHO acknowledges the importance of reckoning with past scientific injustices, and advancing racial equity in health and science,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement at the time.
The Lacks family most recently filed a lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific, a multibillion-dollar biotech company, over its nonconsensual use of Lacks’ cells.
“Today, in Roanoke, Virginia, at Lacks Plaza, we acknowledge that she was not only significant, she was literate and she was as relevant as any historic figure in the world today,” attorney Ben Crump, representing the Lacks family, said at the press conference.
The statue’s inspiration will be derived from a sketch of Lacks created by an artist. Creating the sketch was “a humbling experience,” said Cobbs at the press conference. “Just being involved with something like this, that has so much historical impact, is a huge humbling moment. I couldn’t imagine being surrounded by more supportive people.”
The project was a big deal at the conference and will be created by Larry Bechtel. He said he has had a number ofcommissions, but the one he had was singular.
Rebecca Skloot: The impact of Rebecca Lacks on modern medicine, and her legacy as an inspiration and a champion for black women in science
The impact of Lacks on modern medicine was unknown until Rebecca Skloot wrote a book about her life.
Activists and institutions have worked to posthumously honor Lacks’ nonconsensual contributions and to raise awareness about Black women’s often unknown contributions to science. Lacks was the subject of a portrait at the National Portrait Gallery. And in 2021, the World Health Organization honored her with an award.