Cells harvested from the body of Henrietta Lacks before her death from cervical cancer in 1951 have been essential to major medical breakthroughs for more than 70 years — and the use of those cells without her family’s knowledge brought scrutiny to issues of bioethics and the historical treatment of Black Americans by the medical system.
The statue dedication, in October 2023, took place in Henrietta Lacks Plaza on the south side of the Roanoke Municipal Building. The Roanoke City Council voted unanimously to rename the plaza in 2021. For 64 years prior it was known as Lee Plaza, after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. In 2020, an obelisk in the plaza that honored Lee was toppled off its base. Lacks was born in Roanoke and lived there until she was three. The sculptor is Larry Bechtel. The $184,000 statue and accompanying interactive web site were paid for with privately raised funds spearheaded by Hidden Histories, an organization working to raise awareness of local Black history.
In 1951, Lacks received treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, the only hospital in the area treating Black patients at the time. The cancer proved to be terminal, and Lacks passed away later that year at age 31. But her cells—nicknamed “HeLa cells,” —lived on. They have been used for decades in critical medical research on the human genome, viruses, cancer treatments and more. Even though her cells are still used in laboratories today, neither she nor her descendants were ever compensated for the theft of her genetic material.
