Black Women Aren’t Asked To Be In Clinical Trials

Explore Our Galleries

An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Click Here

Ways to Support ABHM?

Click Here

November 15, 2023

By Anissa Durham, Word in Black

Kianta Key. — Kianta Key is author of the GCI Health Report, which has surprising results

“Black people in clinical trials.” That’s not a phrase you hear very often. In fact, the media has often said Black folks are afraid to participate in clinical trials because of historical medical mistreatment.

But a new survey by health communications company GCI Health of 500 Black women in 38 states says something different.

It’s not that Black women are unwilling to participate in clinical trials; it’s that no one ever asks.

Kianta Key, group senior vice president and author of the GCI health report, tells Word In Black that researching this started with a conversation she had with her mother. Key asked if she had ever participated in a clinical trial — her mother said no one had ever asked. But, if anyone did, she would consider it.

“We’ve been making assumptions about Black women and allowing that to guide what we do. And it’s been wrong. The data shows that it’s not correct,” Key says.

Learn how patients may be invited to clinical trials–and why Black women aren’t included.

Providers also fail to give Black women information.

Follow more Black culture and health stories.

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.