Hey, prime members, you can listen to American Scandal add-free on Amazon music, download the app today.

A listener note, this series is about a shameful chapter in American history.

As part of telling a story accurately, we present the point of view of doctors and others from the period

who express racist and white supremacist views.

Listener discretion is advised.

As the men file into his Montgomery office in late July 1973, Fred Gray recalls the moment he joined this fight.

He just wrapped in for a relaxing return trip home to Alabama from DC.

He's the seat back, then pulled out that day's New York Times.

Right away, something caught his attention.

It wasn't the biggest headline on the front page, not by far.

In fact, it was relegated to the bottom left corner, but there it was.

Ciflus victims in U.S. study went untreated for 40 years, a gene heller.

As he read, he found each new line worse than the one before.

Human beings with syphilis were induced to serve as guinea pigs.

Again in 1932, with about 600 black men, mostly poor and uneducated from Tuskegee, Alabama.

Officials who say they have serious doubts about the morality of the study also say that it is too late to treat the syphilis in any surviving participants.

Gray was angry, hurt, and appalled. But he wasn't shocked.

When you've spent two decades as a civil rights lawyer in the South, racism doesn't shock you.

Though he had to admit he'd never seen anything quite like this.

Gray folded the paper, then wondered if he knew any of the old men from making county who'd been so cruelly tricked all those years ago.

It turns out he did, and they needed a lawyer.

That was a year ago.

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