In the 1950’s and 1960’s throughout America, the government conducted experiments on Blacks and sprayed a housing project with harmful chemicals. The military released declassified records and reports containing thousands of pages of information about an ultrasecret military program. A sociologist, Lisa Martino-Taylor obtained declassified records through The Freedom of Information Act, according to ksdk.com.
The U.S. military secretly sprayed a harmful chemical, Zinc Cadmium Sulfide throughout inner city areas. In St. Louis, Missouri, the U.S. military released radioactive chemicals from the top of buildings in a housing project. The military sprayed chemicals from airplanes over Corpus Christi, Texas according to Martino-Taylor who shared her findings with ITeam Investigates.
St. Louis, Missouri’s former Pruitt–Igoe housing projects was an 11-story high rise where residents were almost exclusively Black. The Pruitt-Igoe residents became unsuspecting victims of the U.S. military’s ultrasecret program. Under the guise of testing the effectiveness of chemicals during the cold war, the military placed canisters of Zinc Cadmium Sulfide on the top of the high rise buildings and studied the effects on people’s lungs. The substance is linked to a company formerly known as U.D. Radium, maker of radioactive paint responsible for many deaths.
Over 10,000 residents of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project were subjected to the harmful chemicals. 70 percent of the residents were less than 12 years old. By the early 1970’s the housing project became an icon of failure of urban renewal and public housing, and was eventually demolished. The reason for its failure and the failure of other housing projects needs to be reexamined, especially in light of the U.S. military’s role in causing the decline. Whenever a government subjects its Black residents to harmful chemicals it creates conditions for failure to take place; and it is responsible for genocide.
