In 1793, Philadelphia was America's largest city with a population of approximately 55,000. It was the country's temporary capital and its busiest port. That summer was unusually dry and hot, leaving water levels dangerously low and providing the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. By July, the city's inhabitants noted extraordinary numbers of mosquitoes swarming the dock area. In other words, Philadelphia was ripe for an unprecedented health disaster.
In late July, a ship carrying an ailing crew and slaves from Haiti arrived on the shores of Philadelphia. Within a week, people started dying. Benjamin Rush, a doctor and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, noted the symptoms resembled those of yellow fever.
Yellow fever, like malaria, is carried and transferred by mosquitoes. The symptoms begin with fever and muscle pain and victims often become jaundiced (hence, the term “yellow” fever), as their liver and kidneys cease to function normally. Further, the internal bleeding in the digestive tract causes bloody vomit and many people become delirious before dying.
Benjamin Rush and other health officials didn't know at the time what was causing the disease, but they observed the first fever cases clustered around the Arch Street wharf. Rush's committee published a letter in the city's newspapers, warning citizens to avoid fatigue, night air, the hot sun, liquor, and anything else that might lower their resistance. They outlined measures for city officials: stop the tolling of church bells and make burials private; explode gunpowder in the street to increase the amount of oxygen; and clean the wharves and streets. They also recommended avoiding contact with the sick.
Within weeks, people throughout the city were experiencing symptoms. Many tried to leave, but the reach of the virus could not be avoided. By the middle of October, the pandemic took hold and spread like wildfire throughout Philadelphia, reaching its peak with 100 people dying from the virus every day. The healthcare system was overrun with sick patients, causing the collapse of the local city government.
The Pennsylvania Hospital, like all hospitals at that time, did not admit patients with infectious disease. Instead, the mayor and a committee organized a fever hospital at Bush Hill, a 150-acre estate outside the city. Vice President John Adams had recently rented the main house, so yellow fever patients were placed in the outbuildings. Nurses were hired to treat patients, and physicians visited on a daily basis.
Benjamin Rush had heard of Charleston doctor John Lining's observation during the 1742 yellow fever epidemic that African slaves appeared to be affected at rates lower than whites. Lining assumed they had a natural immunity to the disease. Under this faulty assumption, Rush wrote an open letter to the city's newspaper under the name of Anthony Benezet, a well-known Quaker and abolitionist who helped educate blacks. In the letter, Rush suggested that the city's black community had immunity to the disease and pleaded with them to offer their services and care for the sick.
The Free African Society, formed by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, decided to respond to Rush's letter by sending black nurses and aides to attend the sick. Allen and Jones wrote their recollection to Rush's letter in a memoir they published shortly after the epidemic:
Early in September, a solicitation appeared in the public papers, to the people of colour to come forward and assist the distressed, perishing, and neglected sick; with a kind of assurance, that people of our colour were not liable to take the infection. Upon which we and a few others met and consulted how to act on so truly alarming and melancholy occasion. After some conversation, we found a freedom to go forth, confiding in Him who can preserve in the midst of a burning fiery furnace, sensible that it was our duty to do all the good we could to our suffering fellow mortals. We set out to see where we could be useful. The first we visited was a man in Emsley's alley, who was dying, and his wife lay dead at the time in the house, there were none to assist but two poor helpless children. We administered what relief we could, and applied to the overseers of the poor to have the woman buried. We visited upwards of twenty families that day—they were scenes of woe indeed! The Lord was plentiful to strengthen us, and removed all fear from us...[22]
Although Rush's committee implied the fever was contagious and people should avoid contact with its victims, black nurses came to aid the sick and dying. In addition, the Free African Society hired black men to take away the dead for burial. In the end, black people did not have an immunity to yellow fever and died at the same rate as whites, about 240 perished altogether.
Shortly after the pandemic, publisher Mathew Carey wrote a pamphlet with accusations of greed, especially by landlords who evicted ailing tenants into the street to gain control of their homes. While he praised Allen and Jones for their work, Carey suggested that blacks were the cause of the epidemic and that some nurses had charged high fees and had even stolen from the sick.
Allen and Jones quickly wrote a response to defend the black community and to preserve the history of how the Free African Society offered their services to both black and white patients during the crisis. In addition, they documented the contribution the black community had made during the pandemic, indicating that the first nurses from the Free African Society had worked without any pay--and, in fact, the FAS paid for coffins and other services out of pocket without reimbursement.
Yellow fever caused the death of one-sixth of the population remaining. Approximately 5,000 or more people were listed in the official register of deaths between August 1 and November 9 and the vast majority died from yellow fever, making the epidemic in the city of 50,000 people one of the most severe in United States history.
I have gone through most of my life without knowing this important story in history. In fact, most of us go all the way through school without learning the contributions and sacrifices the black community has made for our country.
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We're in the midst of a pandemic right now. We've been quarantined, our ordinary lives feel disrupted by powers beyond our control, our rights feel infringed upon. Some in the white community say the government is trying to take their rights away and have called social distancing measures tyranny. We've seen the white community protest and storm capital buildings in order to be heard. In Wisconsin, the state supreme court sided with protesters and overturned the governor's stay at home order.
Wisconsin is reopening during a pandemic with no cure, no vaccine and no cohesive plan because of pressure from the white community. If you're a white person, and have ever wondered if you have power, now you can know the answer is yes.
Many of us have seen the video of George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis police. Officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, knelt on Floyd's neck for seven minutes and Floyd pleaded for help, pleaded for his mother, pleaded with them to let him up. Bystanders filmed the incident, also pleading with the officers to let him up and check his pulse. The video shows that the officers did not. The paramedics arrived on scene to an unresponsive man and did not perform CPR on site. Floyd was later pronounced dead. Minneapolis police said in a statement early Tuesday that the officers were responding to a report of a forgery when Floyd "physically resisted" and that he died after "suffering medical distress."
If we did not have these bystander videos, the official report of Floyd dying by way of "medical distress" would be viewed as accurate and that's what we would believe. However, the videos emerged immediately after the incident and tell a different story. The viewer can clearly see what happened to Floyd. And once we see, we cannot unsee.
Once we see this video, we have to surrender the soft, comfortable privilege of not knowing. Once again, Americans have to grapple with our racial divides, which seem to be growing deeper. The white community has to decide what to do with its power: stay silent or speak up.
George Floyd was being arrested for using a counterfeit $20 bill. He was not committing a violent crime. No matter where you identify politically, this video clearly shows this man being killed by police officers and, although we may try, we cannot rationalize it or explain it away. The four officers in question have been fired, the FBI has initiated an investigation and his killing has sparked protests.
Read this part slowly: the infringements that COVID-19 has placed on our lives may be the closest the white community will ever come to feeling what it's like to be black in America. The rights of the black community have been infringed upon; black people are being oppressed by the government—and they've been having that problem for hundreds of years. But leaders listen when white people storm the capital and put pressure on their representatives. Black people need the white community to have that same level of outrage. Jay English, a Milwaukee activist and pastor, says, "This pain I’m feeling— I need you to feel that and I need you to do something about it. I need to you talk, I need you to call your congressman. I need you to put that same amount of pressure on them for this.”
English has observed when black communities push for change in gerrymandering and oppressive laws, change doesn't come, even after hundreds of years. This month, he's seen the white community protesting, putting so much pressure on the government and officials by storming capitals and pushing to reopen everything. "I’m watching [white people] get stuff changed, I’m watching it happen. I’m seeing you doing it...We need your help. Stand up with us, speak up."
The black community has been crying out, organizing, protesting—yet most of the white community hasn't believed them because they haven't experienced the problems black people are talking about. When a white person calls the police, they expect the police will respond to their concerns and be on their side. When white people get pulled over for speeding, we're not asked to get out of the car so the officers can search it. We're not often pulled over or stopped for fitting the description of a suspicious person. When white people walk down the street, they don't expect other people to feel afraid of them. So when black people tell us a different story, it's easy to disregard because we know it's not like that, which is a way for white people to gaslight the black community.
I'm white. I'm not trying to shame my white community. My intent is to remind white people of the power we have and to wield it wisely.
Since the inception of this country, the black perspective has been largely invalidated. White people have had the power to write history, control the narrative and tell the story we want to tell. For decades, black people didn't have representatives, tv anchors and athletes speaking up for their interests. Jay English notes that for years, the black community didn’t have a platform but now with social media, they do. With social media, English says, black people can show what happens and their voice is being heard without being shut down. Social media can now show what happens without waiting for the public officials to tell people what happened or suppress the story.
Black people cannot wait until white people understand their experience--that may never happen. But what we see in this video is enough to compel us to act. It's time for the white community to speak up. It's time for white people to storm the capitals and pressure their representatives. White people should be filled with collective outrage, and this time not because it's something that benefits us. The burden of change can no longer be set solely upon the shoulders of black people.
For the white churches: it's time to talk about this in the pulpits, in small groups and with the children. We need to see white pastors speaking up and congregants should be full of lament and holy outrage; they should not be deflecting, not finding ways to rationalize or explain away. In fact, the worst thing the white church can do right now is to be silent. Yes, white churches may lose people who will say the church is being "too political". Bless them and let them go. When churches are forced to choose between acting on injustice or to stay silent, churches must land on the side of caring for the oppressed. Jesus reminds the fiscally-responsible Pharisees they have disregarded "the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former," (Matthew 23).
White churches typically stop short of engaging in complex topics like race. Sure, they may have a black pastor speak a couple times a year, or invite racially diverse choirs to join for worship. These acts create feel-good moments for the white church, but these acts alone merely leave the congregants feeling progressive while avoiding conversations about current racial injustices. "I need a love that is troubled by injustice," author Austin Channing Brown says, "A love that is provoked to anger when Black folks, including our children, lie dead in the streets. A love that can no longer be concerned with tone because it is concerned with life. A love that has no tolerance for hate, no excuses for racist decisions, no contentment with the status quo. I need a love that is fierce in its resilience and sacrifice. I need a love that chooses justice."
English says, "You cannot say you love me and watch this happen and sit by." White churches should be storming the gates of heaven with their prayers because this is also a battle against powers and forces we cannot see. When God answers our prayers and puts real people in our path for us to help, we have to act. We need to shine a light in the dark corners of our hearts and our sanctuaries.
The white community needs to be involved so the black community doesn’t have to do it alone--not as saviors, but as supporters, activists, and relentless influencers. This is what racial reconciliation looks like: when we're all living inside the same story and using the influence we have to address racism openly, have conversations, and take action. Racial reconciliation is revolutionary and changes the structure of power; reconciliation is choosing justice (Channing Brown).
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Let's go back to Benjamin Rush, the doctor during the yellow fever pandemic. The city was being crushed by the virus and he pleaded for the black community for help. And they did help, at great risk of their own health and lives. They didn't stay home, wishing and believing things would get better. They didn't deny that people were actually dying, or say sick people probably had it coming because of poor choices, bad hygiene, or because they tried to use a counterfeit bill. They came and they served and they suffered.
To the white community, it's our turn to respond.
Once more, from English, "I don’t care about your feelings being hurt, because people are dying. I don’t care about making you comfortable, because people are dying. I don’t care about you understanding or trying to rationalize."
No more deflecting. No more talking about black on black crime. No more saying he had it coming. No more.
Further Resources:
Jay English, May 27, 2020
Netflix’s mini-series When They See Us
Austin Channing Brown I'm Still Here
Milwaukee Declaration
Scene on Radio podcast Seeing White series, parts 1-3
1619 podcast
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
