Sick by Design: Volume Two Jim Crow's Laboratory: Plague, Segregation, and Black Healing from the Great Migration to Tuskegee

They didn’t just separate us.They studied us.From the crowded tenements of the Great Migration to the controlled environments of Tuskegee, this era marked a shift—from neglect to observation, from exclusion to experimentation. Disease didn’t just spread. It was tracked, measured, and, at times, allowed to continue.This is the chapter of history where segregation became a laboratory.In Sick by Design: Volume Two, Psalms & Potions exposes how Black bodies were positioned at the center of medical exploitation during the Jim Crow era. Tuberculosis in tight living quarters. Pellagra in underfed communities. Syphilis studies that withheld treatment. Public health systems that documented suffering but delayed intervention.But this is not just a record of harm.It is a record of resistance.While institutions observed, Black communities adapted. Bitter tonics, backyard remedies, traveling healers, midwives, and rootworkers carried forward a parallel system of care—one built on survival, not permission.This book documents both sides:The system that watched…and the people who refused to wait.Volume One was about surviving the body under force,Volume Two is about surviving under observation.This is not distant history.This is the blueprint. Read more