The Impact of Miss Ever's Boys

"Miss Ever's Boys" was a powerful and touching play. Prior to seeing it, I had only heard a little about the story. I knew it had something to do with the Tuskegee syphilis study, but that's all I knew. I was so glad to be in attendance and given the opportunity to learn the full story.

Nurse Evers is a young nurse, whose goal is to rid the world of diseases such as pneumonia, which robbed her of her father at the age of five. She meets four men; Willie Johnson (Stanley A. Jackson, III); Caleb Humprhies (Jeff Kirkman, III); Hodman Bryan (Edwin Brown, III); and Ben Washington (Adarius Smith). The men all unknowingly have syphilis. She persuades the men to be a part of a study that can cure them of their disease. Over the course of her time with them, she becomes very close to them. They come to call themselves Miss Ever's Boys. Although she forms a close bond with them, her co-workers are solely focused on the study. After the government dubs syphilis the "black man's disease", funding is removed from the study. Nurse Evers is forced to lie to the men that they will be cured, and the study continues for fourteen years. In the end, she loses their friendship due to suspicion and fear. The true goal of the study was to prove that black men and white men got the same diseases and could be treated the same, which was successful. However, its success was at the expense of thousands of lives of black men; including two of Nurse Ever's patients, Hodman and Ben.

The performance struck me more than I expected it would. As a Nursing major, I know the thin line between helping the patient and staying true to the oath "First Do No Harm". The oath can often be overlooked and ignored when it comes to government affairs or scientific research. Also Nurse Evers had to swallow the fact that her people were being treated as science experiments. She couldn't save them or interfere because she was forced to believe that what the government was doing was for the greater good. Unfortunately, that was life for African-Americans in that time. We had to take whatever was fed us by our government, and we couldn't fight to protect our own people. Times are different now, and "Miss Ever's Boys" was motivation to me to provide care and support to my fellow African-Americans as a nurse or in any way I possibly can.