Henrietta Lacks Legacy Group speaks at Heritage Society of Essex

The Heritage Society of Essex and Middle River welcomed Servant Courtney Speed from Turner Station last Thursday to talk about the life and legacy of Henrietta Lacks.

Originally from Clover, Virginia, Lacks moved to the area so her husband could work at Bethlehem Steel. She lived in Turner Station from 1941 until she died from cervical cancer in 1951. While she was being treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital, doctors discovered something unusual: the cell samples that they took from Henrietta could survive outside of her body.

“These were immortal cells,” Speed explained. “They would just keep on replicating.”

Doctors were able to grow more cells from that sample, which they could use for research in many different ways. The “HeLa” cell line survived long after Henrietta Lacks died, and is still in use today.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins shared samples of the cells freely, and they have contributed to some of the most important medical advancements in history. They have been instrumental in the development of vaccines, cancer treatments, and the Human Genome Project.

Although Lacks’ cell line is one of the most important medical discoveries in history, her family was never compensated and did not even find out about the research until decades after her death.

When a reporter from the BBC first came to Turner Station and asked Speed about Henrietta Lacks for a documentary in the 1990s, nobody knew the woman’s incredible story. Speed, a pillar of the Turner Station community and a passionate historian, was very interested. Since then, she founded the Henrietta Lacks Legacy Group to make sure that the memory of “Medical Miracle Mother” lives on forever, like her cells.

“I asked my clients who had been living in Turner Station since the 20s, and they had never heard of Henrietta Lacks,” Speed said. “Really, the only ones that knew Henrietta were her two oldest sons, Lawrence and Sonny.”

Deborah Lacks, Henrietta’s daughter, didn’t even know her mother’s story. She worked with a woman named Rebecca Skloot for a book titled “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” to learn more.

While researching for the book, Skloot met Speed, who had become an expert on Lacks. The bestselling book made Henrietta Lacks world-famous and has since been made into a movie starring Oprah. If you have a copy, Speed will gladly show you where she appears in the book and give an autograph.

But Speed says some parts of the book have been “embellished” and don’t show her community in the best light.

“She said the sink bowl in my beauty shop looked like it hadn’t been washed in years,” Speed said. “No, anybody who knows me knows, my sink is clean.”

The Henrietta Lacks Legacy Group is now raising money for a wax figure of Henrietta Lacks to be placed in the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, and another to be displayed as part of a traveling exhibit.