Unequal Doses: The Racial Roots of MK-Ultra & Cold-War Psychedelic Experiments

During the Cold War, the U S Army’s covert “Operation Third Chance” mirrored the Marvel lore of Isaiah Bradley—a lone Black super-soldier prototype—only without the hero’s ending. In 1961, military interrogators secretly dosed Specialist James Thornwell, the sole Black soldier on his French post, with LSD after months of physical and psychological abuse over a theft he did not commit. Cleared of wrongdoing yet given only a general discharge, Thornwell returned home with crippling PTSD, describing himself as “an isolated social and emotional cripple.” His ordeal was no anomaly: at the Addiction Research Center in Kentucky, researchers simultaneously funneled LSD and more than 800 other psychoactive drugs into incarcerated Black men, while White “comparison” participants enjoyed low-dose sessions in a scientist’s suburban living room.

Our MeetUp digs into these racially stratified experiments—across the Army, the CIA’s MK-Ultra program, and the ARC—to expose the unequal burdens Black bodies have borne in psychedelic research. Guided by scholars Sheldomar Elliott, BA, and Lianna Tullis-Robinson, MA, we’ll examine how state-sanctioned science erased consent, compounded trauma, and still shapes public trust today. Join clinicians, historians, activists, and curious allies for an unflinching conversation about accountability, reparative justice, and ensuring that the next chapter of psychedelic medicine is written with ethical integrity and racial equity at its core.