You are in: Exhibits: Herbs:
Public Health
You are in: Exhibits: Herbs:
Public Health
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Early in the twentieth century, white health officials began collecting vital statistics. These statistics revealed what came to be called the "Negro Health Problem": high disease, death, and maternal and infant mortality rates among African Americans.
Blacks' poor health became more visible with urbanization. Though many African Americans continued to live in rural areas, growing numbers were moving to cities like Lynchburg. In 1920, one in four Virginia blacks lived in cities; by 1930, one in three did.
In rural counties such as Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford, and Campbell, poor diet and sanitation threatened the health of blacks. In cities such as Lynchburg, disease flourished in crowded neighborhoods where many houses were unsafe, where garbage piled up and sewage went untreated, and where residents did not eat well and lacked running water. In city and country alike, hard physical labor also contributed to illness.
In the cities, where blacks and whites came in closer contact than in the country, tuberculosis became especially pressing. In 1914 the state government, with nucleus funds from the Negro Organization Society, established the Piedmont Sanatorium for Negro tuberculosis patients at Burkeville.
By 1930, the death rate from TB was higher for blacks than for whites in every city and county in Virginia. Whites believed that tuberculosis was spread to white neighborhoods by black women who worked as child-care nurses, cooks, and laundresses.
Concern about the health of whites spurred efforts to stamp out TB and other contagious diseases. When the first chest x-ray machine in the state was installed in Lynchburg's City Hall Annex in 1945, it was used on clinic patients, food handlers, and domestics.
Many whites used TB3/4 evidence of the sickly state of African Americans3/4 to justify continued racial inequality.
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