For most of the first half of the twentieth century, tuberculosis
ranked among the top three causes of mortality among urban African
Americans. Often afflicting an entire family or large segments of a
neighborhood, the plague of TB was as mysterious as it was fatal.
Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr. examines how individuals and
institutions--black and white, public and private--responded to the
challenges of tuberculosis in a segregated society.
Reactionary white politicians and health officials promoted "racial
hygiene" and sought to control TB through Jim Crow quarantines,
Roberts explains. African Americans, in turn, protested the
segregated, overcrowded housing that was the true root of the
tuberculosis problem. Moderate white and black political leadership
reconfigured definitions of health and citizenship, extending some
rights while constraining others. Meanwhile, those who suffered
with the disease--as its victims or as family and neighbors--made
the daily adjustments required by the devastating effects of the
"white plague."
Exploring the politics of race, reform, and public health,
Infectious Fear uses the tuberculosis crisis to illuminate
the limits of racialized medicine and the roots of modern health
disparities. Ultimately, it reveals a disturbing picture of the
United States' health history while offering a vision of a more
democratic future.