Henrietta Lacks was born in Roanoke, Virginia in 1920 to an impoverished Black family of tobacco farmers. Her mother died in childbirth when Henrietta was only four years old, and she and her siblings were sent to live with relatives.
Not much is known of her childhood, but in 1941, she married David Lacks and moved to Turner Station, near Baltimore, Maryland, where they continued to raise their family. In 1951, at only 31 years old, Ms. Lacks was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cervical cancer, and she passed away in October of that year, leaving behind a husband and five children.
Ms. Lacks and her family never imagined that she would one day be referred to as the “mother of modern medicine.” Without her knowledge or consent, a tissue sample collected during a biopsy had been retained for medical research by Johns Hopkins Hospital where she had received cancer treatments.