‘Tuskegee’ cocktail: Bar names drink after syphilis study that left black men untreated

A bar in Westport, Connecticut has been slammed for offering a cocktail named after an infamous, government-run syphilis study that purposefully left black men who had the disease untreated.

Facebook user Eric A. Armour posted a photo on August 15 of the specialty cocktails menu at 323 Main Street. One of the drinks was called “The Tuskegee Experiment.”

“Umm. This is ridiculously horrible,” Armour wrote.

One of his friends, Leah Bornstein, told the Westport News she was “appalled” when she saw the drink on the cocktail menu during a visit to the restaurant to hear a band play on August 11.

The drink bore the name of an infamous study by the U.S. Public Health Service called the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study began in 1932 with 600 black men - 399 of whom had syphilis, 201 who did not. The CDC wrote, “Researchers told the men they were being treated free of charge for ‘bad blood’” - a general term used for any number of illnesses.

But the men who had syphilis were given placebos and were not treated, even after penicillin became a known treatment, according to the CDC. The study was run out of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, now known as Tuskegee University.

A study that was supposed to last six months continued for 40 years until the Associated Press exposed the malevolence in 1972. A government advisory panel called the study “ethically unjustified” and brought it to a halt, according to the CDC. Two years later the government reached a $10 million, out-of-court settlement with the study’s participants and their families.

Several media outlets, including the Westport News, Eater food blog and black media publications, have sought comment from the restaurant but have not heard an explanation for why the drink was on the menu.

“It’s unclear what the cocktail — featuring “Myers dark rum, Malibu, pineapple juice, fresh lime, pineapple & jalapeño mash, dash tabasco” — has to do with this disturbing period in American history,” wrote Eater.

According to the photo, the cocktail shared the menu with drinks called “Cold War Margarita,” “Mango Mule” and “The Red October.”

The Root, an online magazine that covers issues in the black community, called it “the evilest, most racist cocktail ever.”

“Apparently the owners and management at 323 Restaurant and Bar, which advertises itself as a ‘friendly neighborhood restaurant,’ believe that joking about a secret, government-sponsored plan to allow black people to suffer through a curable disease for decades goes perfectly with a nice, thick cheeseburger and hand-cut fries,” Michael Harriot wrote for The Root.

Whoever did this, he wrote, “is evil.”

In a statement to the News, Brenda Penn-Williams, president of the Norwalk, Connecticut branch of the NAACP, said the group “condemns” the restaurant for naming a drink after such a “malicious” study.

“To conduct such an experiment on rural, uneducated African-American men which was the leading cause of death is a travesty of injustice and a lack of human regard,” she said. “It is a shame that 323 Main Restaurant continued with the same racist mind set in these times.”

According to most media accounts, the drink disappeared from the menu a few days after the photo hit Facebook. A woman who answered the phone at the restaurant told Eater that all of the cocktail menus had been removed after a customer complained.

Bornstein told the News she spoke with the bartender and contacted the restaurant owner to get the drink removed.

Around town, opinions were mixed about the cocktail.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, to tell you the truth,” Andy Goraj of Trumbull, Connecticut, told News 12 Connecticut. “I mean, it’s just a drink.”

But Bobbet Fairweather, a woman from New Haven, disagreed. “That’s a really nasty name, to be honest with you,” she told the TV station.

The restaurant did not return the TV station’s request for comment, either.

This is the second cocktail with a racially-tinged name to raise hackles this month.

In Kansas City, Missouri, a white, off-duty public safety officer allegedly ordered a “Trayvon Martini” from a black bartender in a popular entertainment area and subsequently lost his job.

The name references the unarmed Florida black teenager, Trayvon Martin, killed in 2012 by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman.

“The bartender’s allegations come amid accusations of a culture of discrimination and racism permeating Kansas City’s social scene,” wrote The Kansas City Star.