| The title of this dissertation, "Infectious Fear," derives from its central thesis: that in the post-Reconstruction South, the politics of race served to inform certain aspects of public health policy as much, if not more, as did actual medical knowledge of certain diseases, namely tuberculosis. That the disease was caused by an identifiable bacillus was common knowledge among physicians after the mid-1880s. That poor housing, inadequate diet, lack of education, and overwork (all suffered by urban African Americans) played as much a role in the development of the disease as casual encounters with the bacillus was also known by the turn of the century. Nonetheless, it was larger political attitudes towards African Americans that shaped public health policy as it related to them.; The first part of the dissertation is largely devoted to turn-of-the-century urban politics and racial theory, considering the political economy of American cities, especially in the South, and its role in the production of disparities between black and white tuberculosis mortality. On the other hand, much of the racial theory used to explain this disparity was formed outside of American cities, in the context of European or American empire, or by apologists of rural agricultural slavery. From racialist premises established in the nineteenth century (acclimatization theory, racial predisposition, etc.), physicians and theorists made claims that purported to have relevance for American cities in the twentieth century.; The rest of the dissertation is devoted to African-American tuberculosis as it was experienced and perceived by black sufferers and white and black physicians. In this regard, I explore the multiple modalities in which black tuberculosis was represented---in urban cartography, social photography, progressive politics. I also show how the experience of black tuberculosis always occurred within social constraints. In that regard, I argue that an exploration of black tuberculosis is incomplete if it focuses only on immediate victims of the disease. Family members, especially the children of the afflicted, also suffered the disease in ways that were unique, individual, and personal, yet formed by discernible patterns of inequality. |
