America’s Love for Mediocre White Men and Hate for Black Bodies

‘Lovecraft Country’ reminded me just how much basic White men ascend off the backs of Blacks

Photo by Kelsey McEuen

Last Sunday, I watched the bittersweet finale of HBO’s spectacular series Lovecraft Country. What does anyone with a fine palette for television do after the richest African-American-rooted show to ever grace television concludes? Obviously, circle back to episode one and rewatch the entire season. What I love most about Lovecraft (aside from the villain in every episode being White supremacy) was how the writers wove African-American nonfiction into each plot. From the vile reaction to Black residents in Chicago’s Cicero suburb (1951) to the stench of Emmett Till’s funeral to the pillaging of Tulsa in 1921, we were constantly reminded and informed of the Black experience’s beautiful, bad, and ugly. It was during a third watch of episode 3 (“Holy Ghost”) when I slid down a particularly dark and gruesome rabbit hole. (For those tardy to Lovecraft’s greatness, I promise not to spoil)

As ep 3’s title suggests, its plot focuses on souls from the past. In the scene that sent me spiraling, Leti (played to perfection by Jurnee Smollett-Bell) informs Atticus (played by the new Mahershala, Jonathan Majors) that certain Black women went missing in Chicago and may or may not have ended up the test subjects of a mad scientist. Two of the names mentioned were Lucy and Anarcha. History tells that these women were not missing persons from Chicago. They were in fact Alabama slaves who became the sacrificial guinea pigs for James Marion Sims to be ultimately recognized as the “Father of Modern Gynecology.” Sims is most renowned for inventing the speculum and first repairing vaginal tears. The horror exists in the fact that his medical advancements were accomplished through relentless and excruciating experimentation on slaves. Sims, like so many Americans in the antebellum South, felt Blacks were lesser beings and thus had a considerably higher threshold for pain. He opened the skulls of slave children with a shoehorn. He often operated on female slaves without anesthesia. Unbothered by their deathly wails, he would probe and tear and break their insides as often and as long as he felt fit. After all, these poor women belonged to plantation owners who…