Centuries of medical experimentation on enslaved and free Blacks and scientifically erroneous assumptions about Black bodies have created “a crisis in Black maternal morbidity and infant mortality” in the US, said Deirdra Cooper-Owens, of the Humanities in Medicine Program at the University of Nebraska. The crisis is only now being recognized because “the chorus of protest is getting louder and louder.” Cooper-Owens is co-author of a paper titled “Black Maternal and Infant Health: Historical Legacies of Slavery.”