KALAMAZOO, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – Today has been declared Henrietta Lacks Day in the City of Kalamazoo.
If you don’t know the story, Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cancer in the early 1950’s. Her tissue samples were discovered to have an amazing and useful property: they lived on and replicated themselves in laboratory conditions forever.
The so-called HeLa cells were mass-produced and have been used to do everything from curing polio in the 1950’s to testing treatments for COVID-19.
But it would be decades before the Lacks family found out the cells were from Henrietta, and they have never been compensated.
Kalamazoo School Board Trustee Jermaine Jackson is the great grand nephew of Henrietta Lacks. He suggests everyone wear purple today to mark the occasion. Kalamazoo City Hall will have its purple lights on to mark the day.
Jackson and members of a theater troupe who recently put on a play about the life of Lacks in Kalamazoo were in attendance Monday night when City Commissioners voted to make Tuesday Henrietta Lacks Day.
(reporting from John McNeill)
