HUD Secretary encourages Black Daytonians to get vaccinated during visit

Jun. 25—U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge encouraged Black Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19 while visiting a vaccination clinic in West Dayton on Friday morning.

"I mean let's just be real about it: Black folks, we need to get these shots," Fudge said.

About 30% of Black Ohioans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 45% of white Ohioans, according to the Ohio Department of Health. Information on vaccinations and race is inconsistently collected across the country, but the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that according to the data available, about 9% of coronavirus vaccine recipients in America are Black despite making up about 12% of the U.S. population.

"We are the people who are most concerned about getting it and we say things like, 'Oh the Tuskegee, the Tuskegee,'" Fudge said. "I said, do you all even know what happened at Tuskegee?"

She is referring to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service. In that, the American government caused the deaths of more than 100 Black male participants by preventing them from receiving penicillin, the standard treatment for syphilis by 1947.

Fudge pointed out that the perpetrator of the Tuskegee experiment killed Black people by preventing them from getting a treatment, not by giving them a vaccine.

"So if we're going to tell the story, tell it right," she said. "We have to do better. Right now, the governor has lifted all restraints about what we can do. Just think if we get into a position where we all start to get sick again because somebody didn't care enough about themselves or other people to get a shot."

Fudge visited a vaccination clinic put on by Public Health-Dayton & Montgomery County at Sugar Creek Packing Co. in the Residence Park neighborhood as part of the Biden-Harris administration's national Month of Action campaign to get all eligible Americans vaccinated against COVID-19 as quickly as possible. Other big names like Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Jill Biden and members of the Cabinet are touring the country this month.

The White House acknowledged this week that President Joe Biden's administration will fall shy of its goal to get 70% of American adults fully vaccinated by the Fourth of July. About 150 million Americans, or 45% of the country's population, have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fudge was joined Friday by Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley; U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Columbus; and Dayton singer-songwriter Shirley Murdock. Murdock kicked off the event by singing about the vaccine.

"We know how important it is for our community to get vaccinated so we don't have hotspots in the future," Whaley said. "We know what's happening: Folks that aren't vaccinated are the ones that are getting sick."

Beatty, a Dayton native, remarked that they were standing in her hometown at the site of the former grocery store she visited as a child.

"Today is about saving lives," she said. "Because when people get vaccinated, it saves lives. When people get vaccinated, we can go back to work, our children can go back to school, teachers can go back and teach."

After the visit, Fudge and Beatty traveled with a tour bus emblazoned with the slogan, "We can do this," to visit the Mid-Ohio Foodbank in Grove City near Columbus. Fudge will visit Cleveland on Saturday.

A caravan hosted by the city of Dayton and Public Health then traveled to La Michoacana Mexican Market on Friday for a pop-up vaccination clinic. As part of the promotion, CareSource distributed $50 gift cards Friday to all Medicaid eligible adults getting the shot.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.