The Worsening "Negro Health Problem"
In the 1910s, as increasing urbanization began bringing whites and blacks into closer contact, Virginia health officials started compiling evidence of the "Negro Health Problem" - high disease, death, and maternal and infant mortality rates among blacks. Hard physical labor along with poor diet and sanitation contributed to the problem. Disease flourished in the crowded black neighborhoods, where garbage piled up, sewage went untreated, and running water was often nonexistent .
Fearing that black child-care nurses, cooks, and laundresses might spread tuberculosis to white neighborhoods, the government began looking for ways to stamp out TB and other contagious diseases. At the time, the only treatment facilities for blacks were the Central State Hospital for Mental Diseases and the State Penitentiary .
Agnes Dillon Randolph, a lifelong political activist and charter member of the Virginia State Association of Nurses, became concerned about the situation . To strengthen her political influence, Randolph rose to the position of Executive Secretary of the Virginia Anti-Tuberculosis Association. She lobbied the General Assembly to establish a sanatorium for Negro tuberculosis patients - the first ever in the United States. Although some legislators were reluctant to try such an unprecedented idea, in 1916, the legislature granted her request .
Read more about this topic: Piedmont Sanatorium
Famous quotes containing the words negro, health and/or problem:
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
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