The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is a significant event in black history, and one Texas theater is honoring the tragic and controversial incident with a dramatized rendition during Black History Month.

According to The Houston Chronicle, the play, called "Miss Evers' Boys," is a fictionalized account of nurse Eunice Evers' moral struggle with her part in the study.

The syphilis study began in the 1930s and ran until 1972. It saw the U.S. Public Health Service investigating syphilis by studying 600 black male sharecroppers in Alabama. The men were told they were being treated for "bad blood," but had proper medical care willfully withheld from them. After the project lost funding, the study continued without the men being informed that they were not going to be cured.

Eunice Evers was a black nurse who was recruited to be the point of contact between study participants are the researchers. She was tasked with getting the sharecroppers to trust the doctors and scientists involved, and to help ensure participants stayed with the study.

The play sees Evers (played by Shundranieka Ross) recruit four Alabama farmers (played by Ty Fisher, Marvin Young, Shun Lauren and Trey Lewis) with the venereal disease to accept medical treatment provided by the U.S. government.

Everything seems above board until the government runs out of money. Audiences then watch as Evers grapples with whether she should tell the patients or allow the study to continue in hopes that the research could help thousands in the future.

The play's creators said they chose to make Evers the main character in order to zoom in on the choice she faced, and also to portray her as a complex person, rather than a collaborator and a villain.

"You build that heroine up to knock her down," the play's director, Alric Davis, said of Evers. "She is this amazing woman who is doing terrible things."

In researching the nurse, Davis said the play's team found "she had this really, really heartwarming, conversational style," and that the play reflects that in an effort to make the audience "love Nurse Evers even when she makes bad choices."

Davis also noted the study remains relevant in today's society. "Issues regarding health insurance and pay inequality still plague us today, but the forms of racism are more institutionalized," he said.

The play is set to run through March 4 at the Pearl Theater.

Pearl Theater

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