Date of Award

8-2026

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Degree Program

History

Department

History

Major Professor

Kathryn Dungy, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Angela Nelson, Lt. Col.

Third Advisor

Andrea C. Mosterman, Ph.D.

Abstract

This thesis will examine how the early 20th-century medical and military institutions formed the foundation and structural conditions that enabled the United States Public Health Service to launch the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in 1932. Before Tuskegee, academic researchers and federal agencies conducted unethical syphilis experiments on marginalized communities, rooting their unethical practices in racist medical theories that framed Black bodies and health as biologically different and inferior. At the same time, during the First World War and the Interwar Period, the United States military expanded its disease research and prevention efforts, notably involving syphilis, through racially segregated medical systems that subjected troops of color to subpar care and discriminatory assumptions about behavior. By tracing the link between civilian and military practices, this thesis argues that institutionalized racism in medical research and military health administration normalized exploitative actions against Black patients. Together, these practices produced the ideological foundations of the federally conducted Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

Rights

The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.

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Available for download on Friday, August 01, 2031

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