Tuberculous Negroes

In proportion to population, three times as many U. S. Negroes as U. S. whites die of tuberculosis. No one definitely knows why. Probably the Negro has not yet acquired resistance to the disease, or has been less protected by Medicine. Whatever the explanation, the National Tuberculosis Association last week started to attack tuberculosis among U. S. blacks. First step was to declare officially that the country contains two kinds of Negroes--poor Southern country Negroes and less poor Northern city Negroes. Northern Negroes show more tuberculosis than Southern Negroes. The Association is attacking Northern conditions first--upon advice of its special investigator Dr. Cameron St. Clair Guild (pronounced Gould), a Nova Scotian who has become expert on Southern U. S. public health deficiencies. The Rosenwald Fund, builder of schools for rural Negroes, is paying for tuberculosis control among the Race. One able Negro, Sociologist Charles Spurgeon Johnson of Fisk University, belongs to the committee of prevention.

According to Dr. Guild, the country Negroes in 13 Southern States number 6,000,000 (2,000,000 more live in Southern towns and small cities). Psychologically they are very different from the Negro of Northern cities. They have little Race consciousness, "pitifully small cash income. . . . With few exceptions they live in areas which are unable to finance adequate tuberculosis control measures. . . . Several of the States listed make no provision whatever from State funds for sanatoria for either white or colored patients, and in most of the others such service is gravely inadequate."

City Negroes have congregated chiefly in Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Newark, New York, Philadelphia. Pittsburgh, Washington--"communities most of which are financially able to provide whatever may be needed in the way of control measures." These Negroes, numbering about 1,500,000, "intensely Race conscious," have higher tuberculosis death rates than their rural Southern cousins. But they are handier to deal with. As prime examples of tuberculosis prevention among Negroes, the National Tuberculosis Association last week pointed with pride to:

Philadelphia's Henry Phipps Institute, the best, "the centre for research work among Negroes."

Detroit, which "has no waiting list for sanatorium treatment. Patients either white or colored are admitted without delay. . . . An unusual development is the existence of several small hospitals and sanatoria for Negroes with tuberculosis owned and operated by Negro physicians, and staffed by Negro physicians and nurses."

Knoxville "now appears to have as well balanced a program for the control of tuberculosis as any city in the South, and certainly no Southern city of like size* is likely to surpass it."

* Southern cities of like size (105,000 population): Miami, Tampa, Chattanooga, El Paso.

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