How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #1
[Hopkins] was built in 1889 as a charity hospital for the sick and poor, and it covered more than a dozen acres where a cemetery and insane asylum once sat in East Baltimore. The public wards at Hopkins were filled with patients, most of them black and unable to pay their medical bills. (15)
Although Hopkins intended his hospital to be a boon to the poor of Baltimore, it led to a very dangerous situation. Scientists and doctors believed that such impoverished patients should be grateful for any treatment, and shouldn't mind it if they were used for a little experiment here and there.
Quote #2
She knew about harvesting tobacco and butchering a pig, but she'd never heard the words cervix or biopsy. She didn't read or write much, and she hadn't studied science in school. She, like most black patients, only went to Hopkins when she thought she had no choice. (16)
Skloot points out how Henrietta's life experience disadvantaged her in her final medical crisis. She was at the mercy of the doctors who had no intention of explaining to her exactly what was happening to her body.
Quote #3
Like most young Lackses, Day didn't finish school: he stopped in the fourth grade because the family needed him to work the fields. But Henrietta stayed until the sixth grade. During the school year, after taking care of the garden and livestock every morning, she'd walk two miles—past the white school where children threw rocks and taunted her—to the colored school, a three-room wooden farmhouse hidden under tall shade trees [...]. (20)
Being poor meant kids had to leave school early to help support their families; being black meant that what schooling they did get was inferior to white children. It's a one-two punch for the Lacks kids.