Henrietta lacks was an African-American woman whose cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research. Lacks was a Black woman. The hospital where her cells were collected was one of only a few that provided medical care to Black people. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African-American woman, went to Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital to be treated for cervical cancer.