![]() ![]() Henrietta ended up with her grandfather, Tommy Lacks, who was already raising another grandchild left by one of his daughters: Henrietta’s cousin David “Day” Lacks, five years older. Of course, nobody in Clover could afford to take all of the children, so the siblings were split among relatives. ![]() Her father wasn’t someone with enough patience to raise a child (let alone 10), so when his wife died, he took all of his children back to Clover, Virginia, “where his family still farmed the tobacco fields their ancestors had worked as slaves.” When she was four, her mother died while giving birth to her tenth child. Nobody knows how and when she became Henrietta – but, not that long after her birth, people started referring to her by her nickname: Hennie. Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant in Roanoke, Virginia, on August 1, 1920. So, get ready to join Rebecca Skloot on her journey to uncover who Henrietta Lacks was, and prepare to learn why her story is “inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans.” Henrietta Lacks: an ordinary life (1920 – 1941) Her cells, however, are still alive: taken without her knowledge (or the knowledge of her children), they are the “first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory.” And they have helped us understand the nature of numerous diseases while leading to the discovery of countless vaccines and cures. Buried in an unmarked grave, Henrietta Lacks was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who died aged 31 in 1951. ![]()
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