Miss Evers' Boys

Miss Evers’ Boys was a very heart-wrenching play to say the least. The play was based on the long and cruel Tuskegee Experiments. The experiments were supposed to study the reaction of blacks to different syphilis treatments. Unfortunately, during the 1930’s racism was still at a peak so the black men involved in the experiments were seen as disposable. The experiments were not really giving participants treatments. Instead men were receiving placebos and essentially their own death certificate.

The play is entitled Miss Evers’ boys because it highlighted the demise of a group of talented entertainers- Caleb, Willie, and Ben who had named their performing act after the nurse Miss Evers. These men were infected with syphilis and attempted to receive treatments in hopes to get back on track to reach their dreams of performing at the Cotton Club. The play was complicated by the fact that the seemingly compassionate nurse Miss Evers knew that these men were going untreated but urged them to keep with the “treatment”. They were indeed her boys. Even after years of no success, they continued to follow Miss Evers advice to keep with treatment. I didn’t understand how Miss Evers allowed her own friends to undergo the mental torture, knowing that they were being given false hopes. She sat by their sides consoling them as they all physically fell apart.

The play was very emotional for me to watch not only because of the relationship between Miss Evers and the three men, but because at one point I remembered that this play was based on actual experiments that really did happen in the United States for 40 years.