SALT LAKE CITY — It’s a slim yet painful chapter in the civil
rights history books. For a shocking 40-year period beginning in
1932, 399 black sharecroppers were denied treatment for
syphilis. The U.S. Public Health Service hoodwinked the men into
believing they were being treated so the untreated progression
of the disease could be formally studied. “That’s how the
medical profession viewed people of color in the 1930s,” said
Toni Byrd, “We were used as guinea pigs.” Byrd is the director
of “Miss Evers’ Boys” in its Utah premiere. The memory play
dramatizes the notorious government study in a coproduction with
the Grand Theatre Institute and the Etta Grace Black Theatre
Company Byrd cofounded. “It started out as a treatment program,
but — depending upon who read — some people feel that the funds
were pulled deliberately while other authors feel that the money
was pulled because of the Depression,” she said. “No one will
know that for sure.” The titular Miss Evers is based on the
real-life Eunice Evers, the b