Race, Medicine, & Society - February 20, 2018
Discussion Questions:
- What were the competing ideas about Reconstruction?
- What cultural and political factors shaped African American health after the Civil War?
- Who/What was most responsible for African American suffering?
Quotes:
“Reconstruction witnessed the birth of the Modern Black Community.” - Eric Foner
“At last, The Black Man is free.” - Frederick Douglass
Reconstruction (1865-1877)
- How to rebuild country after the Civil War?
- Significant physical destruction of the South; economy destroyed because no more slave labor
- 4 million people freed, nearly ¼ die next 10 years during the Smallpox epidemic
- Sectional Divide after war (North and South aren’t instantly friends after the war)
- What’s the relationship between the North and the South going to be?
- North as conqueror of South or try to restore relationship of pre-civil war United States
Radical Republicanism - party in control after Civil War.
Main Views: South needed to be turned into a Democracy, the South needed to be punished (military occupation of the South) , free people educational benefits
Free Labor - Not enslaved. African American protections (laws)
Wade Davis Bill - What a state needs to do to come back to Union.
- Majority of free white men in state must swear oath to US and declare they had never aided the war effort in the South
10% Plan (Lincoln) - only 10% had to have been people that hadn’t participated in the Confederacy
Ex-States had to ratify 14th amendment to come back into the Union
African Americans suddenly free
Issues:
- Migration - Nowhere to go. When enslaved they didn’t have the ability to move freely. People moved to reunite families, find jobs, move from rural to urban areas
- Families - disruption of African American families by slavery
- Education - 90% of freed population was illiterate
- Free Labor - How do African Americans approach labor? Economic autonomy is what African American males seeked. Pushed back into agriculture.
- Participation in politics - manhood suffrage
Reconstruction ends in 1877 with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South
- White Supremacist Regime rises as equality isn’t enforced in the South
No force to enforce medical relief for non-whites
Belief that Smallpox would make emancipated slaves go extinct
Smallpox vs Cholera (response was different)
More response for Cholera because whites thought Cholera affected the whole population
Physiological differences and result from emancipation = smallpox
- God’s disapproval of emancipation
- Smallpox symbolic meaning - inherent inferiority
- White “Emancipation has led to Smallpox and punishment”
Discourse = ways of thinking
Smallpox moves from biological epidemic to a way of thinking
Smallpox compared to Native Americans because of disease
Race, Discourse, Cure
Disease mechanism to get rid of unwanted populations, Natives infected on purpose
Dependency
Are Freed People able bodied or not?
- White debate
- Free Labor
- Are African Americans citizens?
Vaccines for non-whites:
-Inadequate dosage
-Shared needles
-Wrong ingredients
-Not packaged correctly
Federal Government lax on smallpox
-Members of Congress believed that African Americans would die off so therefore they didn’t require medical care or effort to provide medical care would go to waste
Survival of the fittest idea of the time (Darwin’s Natural Selection)
Government tried to solve Smallpox, but when it started to hit African Americans disproportionately they began to lax
Reasons for Smallpox?
-God
-Racial Inferiority
-Bad sheltering of soldiers in Civil War
-Inadequate treatment by healthcare system
-Lack of action by government
-Physicians would only quarantine area, not treat
Cholera = “Co-lera”
Cholera affected both, gov knew what to do and acted
Smallpox mainly non-whites, gov didn’t act
“Wasn’t what we did, it what was not done”
- Government didn’t do much to fight against Smallpox
- Willingness to be indifferent to their suffering. Disease, go extinct. Chose not to treat them.
- Various racist thoughts shaping the public health response.
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