Showing papers in "Journal of Social History in 2001"
TL;DR: The potential implications of research into the intersecting histories of European colonialism and psychiatry are revealed by highlighting recent studies of British and French colonial psychiatry in Africa and Asia, while also addressing possible future directions for the study of colonial psychiatry.
Abstract: Cultural, social, and intellectual historians have begun to examine the intersecting histories of European colonialism and psychiatry. At their best, these studies engage with at least four distinct historiographies. First, they revise the history of European medicine by illustrating the importance of the colonies to metropolitan scientific developments. Second, they explore the relationship between knowledge and power in the colonial context that the pre-occupied scholars since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978. Third, they explicitly address the psychology of colonialism, a phenomenon at the heart of many intriguing yet speculative works in postcolonial studies. Finally, they open a new methodological window into the history of race by exploring institutional psychiatry's contributions to definitions of race and citizenship under colonialism. This essay reveals the potential implications of such research by highlighting recent studies of British and French colonial psychiatry in Africa and Asia, while also addressing possible future directions for the study of colonial psychiatry.
84 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that gender was both perceived as a crucial aspect of that transformation and became a principal means of articulating changes in class identity in postwar Britain.
Abstract: This article examines the relationship between gender and class identity in 1950s Britain, using sociological sources. Through changes in work and sexuality, the period witnessed a growing complexity of femininity, whether seen in the increased number of working women or the spread of family limitation. Contemporary literature on working women promoted the idea that this was helping reshape the public and private spheres of working class life. At the same time, sociologists observed changes in masculinity and in expectations of domesticity and marriage. Such discourses suggested that gender ideology had become more complex within the working classes. This occurred at a moment when it was also assumed that affluence and prosperity were transforming working class identity, breaking down traditional outlooks and loyalties. This article argues that gender was both perceived as a crucial aspect of that transformation and became a principal means of articulating changes in class identity in postwar Britain.
84 citations
TL;DR: The Jamaica slave court enacted rituals that both dramatized and sustained power relations, but rather than representing the supposed common discipline of all to a single rule of law, as did the contemporary British spectacle of trial and punishment, the Jamaican court's practice emphasized the difference between enslaved and free, valorizing the private penal power of the master under slavery.
Abstract: Previous analyses of the punishment of slaves in the British colonies have concentrated on the period after 1780. This article uses the mid-eighteenth-century records of the slave court of the parish of St. Andrew, Jamaica, to analyze the crimes for which slaves were prosecuted and the judicial punishments they received. Prosecutions concentrated heavily on a few offences, especially theft and running away. Punishments were severe and were largely concerned with the slave's body; they included death, flogging, transportation, and bodily mutilation. Some punishments made use of the cotton tree, which figured significantly in Afro-Jamaican cosmology, suggesting that the authorities were trying to harness or combat the power of obeah. The article compares the Jamaican slave court's practice to that of British courts in the same period, as well as to the experience of slaves under other jurisdictions. The slave court enacted rituals that both dramatized and sustained power relations, but rather than representing the supposed common discipline of all to a single rule of law, as did the contemporary British spectacle of trial and punishment, the Jamaican court's practice emphasized the difference between enslaved and free, valorizing the private penal power of the master under slavery.
83 citations
TL;DR: In this age of modern era, the use of internet must be maximized as mentioned in this paper, as one of the benefits is to get the collective and the individual in russia a study of practices book, as the world window, as many people suggest.
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72 citations
TL;DR: For instance, this article argued that red-light districts were like marketplaces where the Vice Trust bought and sold prostitutes to fill district brothels. And contemporary writers correlated white slavery with debt peonage.
Abstract: During the white slavery scare of the Progressive era, American reformers intertwined the story of the sexually coerced maiden with a heated condemnation of the business of vice. Economic allusions permeated the rhetoric of anti-vice reform, but three metaphors in particular anchored reformers' representation of social relations in urban red-light districts. The first metaphor depicted the business of vice as a trust composed of allied interests. The second metaphor was that red-light districts were like marketplaces where the Vice Trust bought and sold prostitutes to fill district brothels. And finally, contemporary writers correlated white slavery with debt peonage. By shifting the rhetorical terrain away from sin and individual salvation and toward an economic analysis of urban culture, American anti-vice reformers appropriated laws governing commerce as a new set of legal referents and strategically employed the three interlocking metaphors as juridical analogies for constructing legislation and interpreting the laws that regulated vice. Anti-monopolism was not the only discourse urban reformers used during the white slavery scare---traces of abolitionist rhetoric, evangelical exhortations, nativist captivity narratives, and social hygiene education were also present---but the shared commercial critique explains how a diverse group of reformers could unite into a culturally cohesive movement with a powerful legislative agenda.
65 citations
60 citations
TL;DR: The history of other caffeine beverages such as guayusa and yerba maté in South America provides a wider view to illustrate the variables involved in the transition of caffeine plant domesticates from pre-colonial regional products to cosmopolitan, global commodities.
Abstract: Caffeine drinks were unknown in Europe prior to the 16th century expansion of European colonial powers. Coffee, tea and cacao were the three caffeine commodities which, by the late 17th century, dominated European caffeine consumption habits. World systems models of mercantile expansion have emphasized European consumption as a driving force behind the development of plantation economies. The process by which these drinks gained prominence, however, was initially centred on regional production and consumption in the colonies themselves. The history of other caffeine beverages such as guayusa and yerba mate in South America provides a wider view. Such products never gained a market in the metropole, but illustrate the variables involved in the transition of caffeine plant domesticates from pre-colonial regional products to cosmopolitan, global commodities.
53 citations
TL;DR: The article tries to uncover women's narratives as transmitters of `herstory' of modernization in Turkey after the foundation of Turkish Republic in 1923 by suggesting the gendered nature of the public rhetoric and discourses, social morés and conduct, as well as daily practices generated by the modernization project.
Abstract: The article tries to uncover women's narratives as transmitters of `herstory' of modernization in Turkey after the foundation of Turkish Republic in 1923. Based on personal narratives collected through a research project carried out by the Women's Library, Istanbul, the authors suggest historical processes of modern Turkish femininity and point to the gendered nature of the public rhetoric and discourses, social mores and conduct, as well as daily practices both in the public and the private sphere, generated by the modernization project.
48 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined female adolescents' experience of Canadian reform school for girls between 1930 and 1960 and found that girls engaged in a variety of rebellious activities including verbal retorts, passive resistance, running away, and rioting.
Abstract: This article examines female adolescents' experience of Canadian reform school for girls between 1930 and 1960. Myers and Sangster challenge the prevailing characterization of delinquent girls as submissive to authority and docile while in custody. A study of girls' individual and collective resistance, this article brings together research on Ontario and Quebec reform schools and reveals that girls engaged in a variety of rebellious activities including verbal retorts, passive resistance, running away, and rioting. Following girls through the juvenile justice system, the authors illustrate the key moments--from court appearance to parole--when girls were likely to rebel against authority. The authors argue that while these acts of resistance may appear to us as spontaneous and uncoordinated, girls' protests and violent behaviour were often clearly directed at being labelled "delinquent" and at being subjected to regimes that emphasized domestic labour, sexual purity and passive femininity.
38 citations
37 citations
TL;DR: In the immediate post-World War II period, women in the U.S. occupied portions of Germany and Austria faced a significant threat of violence from men, especially returning Wehrmacht soldiers, who were attempting to hinder relationships between their countrywomen and American occupation troops.
Abstract: In the immediate post-World War II period, women in the U.S. occupied portions of Germany and Austria faced a significant threat of violence from men, especially returning Wehrmacht soldiers, who were attempting to hinder relationships between their countrywomen and American occupation troops. Punishments ranged from social ostracization to threats to physical attacks and hair clippings. Although such things happened in many parts of Europe between 1942 and 1948, a phenomenon which was part of a more general trend involving the reassertion of moral and patriarchal standards of conduct disrupted by the war, there is no doubt that the process was particularly severe in regions of southern Germany and northwestern Austria occupied by American forces. The frequent incidence of fraternization in such areas, occasioned by the wealth and surety of the foreign occupiers as compared to the dire material straits and unhappiness of local women, ensured that there was a steady stream of targets for anti-fraternization hair shearers and sloganeers. The residual impact of Nazi patriarchalism and militarism further added to the tension. In some ways, the anti-fraternization movement provided the closest post-World War II parallel to the counter-revolutionary paramilitary groups active in Germany and Austria in 1919/20.
TL;DR: Professor Watts professes to spy racism in this, as yet, inexplicable differential resistance to yellow fever, but he does not seem to understand that different peoples have historically reacted differently to disease exposure because of the physical environments that forged them.
Abstract: In a review of Sheldon Watts Epidemics and History (which he cites in note 6) I complained, among other things, about words and phrases that were employed such as "guerilla terrorists" to describe Spanish conquistadors , as well as other unwarranted epithets to denigrate medical researchers of the past like Ronald Ross or Walter Reed. At the time I assumed that such deliberately offensive writing stemmed from the author's passion in blaming the West for the epidemiological and medical imperialism it had (often inadvertently) unleashed on the rest of the world. Now, however, I am wondering if this kind of reckless rhetoric could be a style. The review in question was generally favorable, although apparently not fa? vorable enough. I also objected to Watts dismissing "out of hand and with no discussion of the evidence" (p.l05) our demonstration of a black resistance to yellow fever that could not be explained by acquired immunity. And Professor Watts writes (between notes 14 and 15) that in the aftermath ofthe publication of The Cambridge World History of Human Disease (which I edited) that I (and my followers???) "felt at liberty to criticize younger scholars who refused to accept the Kiple yellow fever orthodoxy." The notion of an "old-guy" conspiracy guarding a non-existent orthodoxy is comical; less so is the contention that it is wrongheaded as well as racist and dangerous to point out that populations from areas of endemic yellow fever may have developed a tolerance for the disease that others without the benefit of such residence did not possess. Professor Watts is correct that I have puzzled over the question for the last quarter of a century or so. And during this time to my knowledge no one has ever spied evil or racist intent in that exploration, even though it dealt with sensitive issues and must have made a tempting target. Now that those days are obviously over, I am glad of a chance to restate my reasoning with the hope that it will never again be so misread, misunderstood, and especially misrepresented in the future. Before looking directly at yellow fever immunities it might be useful to glance at the historical experience of human groups with a couple of other illnesses to remind ourselves ofthe ways, other than acquiring immunity by surviving diseases, that peoples have mustered some measure of resistance to them. Tuberculosis makes a good example. Historically, populations having a long experience with it have suffered significantly less from its ravages than those with only abbreviated exposure. The reasons for this differential experience are obscure. Immunity to tuberculosis cannot really be acquired; indeed prior exposure may make devel? opment of active disease much more likely. To be sure there is a high correlation between tuberculosis and poor nutrition and overcrowding, both functions of poverty. But it is difficult to study rampant tuberculosis among nativeAmer? icans, Afro-Americans and native Hawaiians during the latter decades of the
TL;DR: The author--a cultural and medical historian long resident in the Non West--hones in on the disease determinism detected in several works written by Kenneth Kiple and systematically deconstructs Kiple's arguments.
Abstract: This article is a case study in applied objectivity as understood by mainstream historians. It addresses the problem of disease determinism exemplified by late nineteenth and twentieth century interpretations of the role played by yellow fever in \"determining;SPMquot; the ethnic composition of the Caribbean Islands, the American South and the Atlantic coastal zones of Central and South America. In its extreme form yellow fever determinism held that the Christian God created Africans immune to yellow fever, with the intention that they should serve white plantation owners in the New World as slaves. The author--a cultural and medical historian long resident in the Non West--hones in on the disease determinism detected in several works written by Kenneth Kiple and systematically deconstructs Kiple's arguments.
TL;DR: In this paper, an examination of eighteenth-century courtship correspondence from colonial Pennsylvania reveals that men generally sent love letters to the friends and family of the women they wooed, rather than to the women themselves.
Abstract: Examination of eighteenth-century courtship correspondence from colonial Pennsylvania reveals that men generally sent love letters to the friends and family of the women they wooed, rather than to the women themselves. Women, meanwhile, though expressive and affectionate in letters to each other, seldom if ever wrote love letters to their suitors. Analyzing who expressed what emotions when and to whom unveils much about the status calculations and power negotiations that underlay eighteenth-century marriage decisions. As young adults in their mid to late teens, both men and women stressed the importance of privacy and secrecy in courtship. Yet as time went on, women continued to emphasize privacy, while men made public declarations of love. This divergence can be explained by the different stakes courtship held for each; while men who married gained new and enhanced status as household heads, their wives contracted life-long masters. So while elite young women had incentives to delay marriage as long as they could without endangering their overall chances of marrying, young men were eager to win wives. Men's and women's unequal desire to marry conferred an unaccustomed measure of power on women during the courtship years. Young men and women alike made oblique references to this temporary reversal of gendered power in joking metaphors for marriage; young women also discussed their new power--and its fleeting nature--directly amongst themselves. Romantic rhetoric arose as a means of cloaking these tensions. Public declarations of love allowed young men to appear to negotiate with young women merely for love, not for the right to become household masters. Meanwhile, women who eventually silently accepted this love effectively renounced power for passion. Romantic rhetoric helped conceal the impact of eighteenth-century courtships on economic and community status; thus were love and power intimately intertwined.
TL;DR: A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society as mentioned in this paper, i.e., a group of humans who share similar characteristics with others.
Abstract: Race human categorization Wikipedia January 31st, 2019 A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society First used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations by the 17th century the term race began to refer to physical phenotypical traits Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct that is a symbolic identity
TL;DR: In the 1920s and 1930s, newspaper and magazine accounts of narcotics problems, and the propaganda of various anti-narcotic organizations used certain stock ideas and images to construct an intensely fearful public rhetoric about drugs as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: During the 1920s and 1930s, newspaper and magazine accounts of narcotics problems, and the propaganda of various anti-narcotic organizations used certain stock ideas and images to construct an intensely fearful public rhetoric about drugs. Authors routinely described drugs, users, and sellers as "evil," described sinister conspiracies to undermine American society and values, credited drugs with immense power to corrupt users, and called for complete eradication of the problem. That rhetoric became the standard template for American public discourse about drugs, and is still in use. Very similar themes and images, however, were used in earlier crusades against Masons, Catholics, and Mormons. This suggests that anti-drug discourse is linked to a larger American rhetorical tradition, one that stems from Protestant-Republican ideology and cultural concerns--fears of being owned or controlled, fears of anarchy, fears of loss of dynamism, fears of falling away from past virtue and promise. In casting drugs and drug users as a "Great American Enemy" reformers not only addressed the existing social problems posed by drug use, but attempted, through a culturally resonant rhetorical form, to provide their audience with explanations and rallying points, and help them define or recover a sense of cultural identity and purpose.
TL;DR: This article used an 1841 confessional narrative of three free blacks, Amos Warrick, Charles Brown, and James Seward, and one slave, Madison Henderson, to examine how the Mississippi River steamboat culture impacted slave communities in the western region of the American South.
Abstract: This article uses an 1841 confessional narrative of three free blacks, Amos Warrick, Charles Brown, and James Seward, and one slave, Madison Henderson, to examine how the Mississippi River steamboat culture impacted slave communities in the western region of the American South. It argues that in the Mississippi River economy a multidimensional, rascal form of resistance flourished amongst African American steamboat workers. As slave and free black steamboat hands moved between land and river, between city and country, and between slave and free states, many transformed their identities by living outside the law. By appropriating commodities, helping slaves to escape bondage, and participating in informal economies, they created networks that expanded not only their own status but also the scope and power of the larger African American community. Building on recent work in Atlantic history, and grounded in discussions of slave and working-class resistance, this article conceptualizes intersections between African American history and the history of America's major river system.
TL;DR: The long-term decline of severe physical (criminal) violence since the late Middle Ages is well documented for England and Germany, but the question is whether the trend can be understood in terms of Norbert Elias' 'process of civilization'.
Abstract: The long-term decline of severe physical (criminal) violence since the late Middle Ages is well documented for England and Germany. The question is whether the trend can be understood in terms of Norbert Elias' 'process of civilization'. In a rural German region, only few major changes concerning quality and character of violence were detected during Early Modernity. There was a shift from predominance of conflicts about property towards increasing importance of domestic violence during the 18th century. Violent robbery became rare. Harshness of life, acceptance of violence, and weak self-control may be regarded as the crucial factors throughout the whole epoch. Uncontrolled angry violence was dominant. While the share of 'rational', planned violence remained low, willfully exerted instrumental violence was the second frequent type. The process of civilization not only brought improved individual self-control but also a change of attitudes and values. This process has to be viewed as complex and many-layered.
TL;DR: The role of internal identity as an ignored factor in the survival of chiropractic and the demise of homeopaths is drawn on from the Organization literature, arguing that the internal response to such threats contributed substantially to survival or failure.
Abstract: Long a topic of historical inquiry, medical sectarianism and the external factors that promoted their demise are fairly well established. Here, we take an interdisciplinary approach as a lens through which to review the role of internal dynamics in the survival or failure of two medical sectarian groups. We draw on theory from the Organization literature, specifically the role of internal identity as an ignored factor in the survival of chiropractic and the demise of homeopaths. While external threats such as the strengths of the AMA and professional medicine were formidable, we argue that the internal response to such threats contributed substantially to survival or failure. The chiropractics developed a strong internal identity and chose to fight professional medicine in their formative years, continuing to practice independent of licensure and with consequential jail terms. In contrast, the homeopathics experienced an internal identity war within their own ranks, and ultimately selected adaptation rather independence. The two sects had remarkably contrasted outcomes which we argue had more to do with their internal identity formation, challenge and evolution than with mere external forces.
TL;DR: The role of higher education in producing social mobility in England in the 1930s is examined, with large-scale surveys of graduates of a number of non-Oxbridge universities and university colleges in those years chosen to get a mix of circumstances.
Abstract: The paper examines the role of higher education in producing social mobility in England in the 1930s The data result from large-scale surveys of graduates of a number of non-Oxbridge universities and university colleges in those years, chosen to get a mix of circumstances A higher proportion of women than men appeared to come from middle class backgrounds, partly because of the exclusion of Oxbridge Men appeared to have stronger career aspirations than women, targeting professional careers partly as an escape from the conditions of the 1930s Depression Yet most women saw their university education as linked to a need to earn a living, though teaching was the main prospect The view of certain sociologists that fathers supported sons and mothers supported daughters has some substance, but mothers were also important support for sons, especially from lower classes Upward social mobility occurred for virtually all men, but the pay-off to women from university education was more ambiguous, and often rested on the university as a place for meeting their spouse Probably the main effect for women was a 'snowballing' of encouragement to their offspring to attend university, through successive generations of women
TL;DR: It is suggested that peasant settlers are perhaps best described as un-imperial imperialists, colonists whose colonization helped to advance and consolidate Russian imperialism in Russia's eastern territories yet who themselves identified much more clearly with local concerns than with imperial ones.
Abstract: Peasant colonization in the eastern and southern borderlands of the Russian empire was a mass phenomenon in the last decades of the tsarist period yet historians, for a variety of reasons, still know little of what peasant settlers knew or thought about it. This article focuses on this question, approaching it in two ways. Since resettlement represented a major intersection between the worlds of educated and peasant Russia in the late imperial period, the first part of the article examines how the mingling of peasant and non-peasant ways of knowing created a diverse culture of information about resettlement and the frontier in the countryside. The second part of the article then examines settler writings--in particular, letters and longer settlement narratives--in order to identify the principal ways in which colonists represented their migrations and their encounters with borderland peoples and geographies. As the article argues, these experiences were diverse and so too were settler representations, but there was a language of local, practical concerns that was broadly shared by all migrants. Because they tended to describe and interpret their experiences in these terms, the article suggests that peasant settlers are perhaps best described as un-imperial imperialists, colonists whose colonization helped to advance and consolidate Russian imperialism in Russia's eastern territories yet who themselves identified much more clearly with local concerns than with imperial ones.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on everyday interactions between police and disorderly youth in Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles and demonstrate how the exercise of discretionary authority by the police shaped juvenile justice, both before and after the creation of a juvenile court.
Abstract: While urban police are the public officials who most directly regulate juvenile crime and delinquency, their work has rarely been considered in histories of juvenile justice Most studies concentrate on Progressive-era reform and juvenile court, not how kids got in trouble and entered the judicial system in the first place This essay addresses that gap Focusing on everyday interactions between police and disorderly youth in Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles, it demonstrates how the exercise of discretionary authority by the police shaped juvenile justice, both before and after the creation of juvenile court First, police performed a filtering function, deciding which complaints against children and teenagers to handle at their own discretion and which to refer to court Second, the police regulated adolescent behavior on their own by targeting potential offenders for arrest based on the perceived problems of the day (larceny and truancy in turn-of-century Detroit, auto theft in Depression-era Los Angeles) Third, the police, not the courts, decided whether or not to detain arrested youth prior to court hearings Thus, the police largely determined the intake of the juvenile court and could discipline young offenders in their own fashion regardless of the outcome of a case Language: en
TL;DR: The authors show that white northerners and foreigners invested less in slavery than native-born southerners did, even after wealth differences among the groups are factored out, and that those born and reared outside the South were more likely to harbor antislavery feelings.
Abstract: Many foreigners and northerners made their homes in the antebellum South, especially in cities and towns where they constituted a majority of white adult males. Some of their nativeborn neighbors had good reason to doubt the loyalty of nonnatives to the South's peculiar institution of slavery. Foreigners and northerners were less inclined to enforce the system of slavery, more willing to flout the law, more likely to view slaves as unwelcome competitors for jobs, and less able financially to hire or purchase slaves. Census data for five Deep South towns in 1860 show that white northerners and foreigners invested less in slavery than native-born southerners did---even after wealth differences among the groups are factored out. Migrants to the South who used slaves were less likely than native southerners to persist in doing so. The diaries, letters, and memoirs of native and adoptive southerners indicate that those born and reared outside the South were more likely to harbor antislavery feelings. Thus, the large \"outsider\" presence in the Old South made southerners highly conflicted about the ethnocultural diversity of the region and especially suspicious of its urban places.
TL;DR: The failure of the YMCA in Durham to effectively utilise sport as a means of mobilising their constituency was the result of both scepticism within the organisation, and apathy without.
Abstract: Sport apparently played an uncertain role in the YMCA in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Although the moral messages of sport were well recognised in the public schools and universities of the day, evangelical organisations such as the YMCA, have generally been seen as being reluctant to become involved in sporting ventures. Sport was condemned as sinful, immoral and an unwarranted distraction from the vital work of evangelism. In practice however, some YMCA branches did promote sports and games for the moral, physical and spiritual benefits they were seen as imparting. At the same time, there remained a seam of scepticism and opposition within the organisation. The debate within the local YMCA branches as to the role, if any, sport should play, was in fact often protracted and keenly contested. In the case of County Durham it was the sceptics who largely won the day. This triumph should not be seen simply as a victory for moralists and the spiritually minded over the more liberal evangelical Christians. Rather the failure of the YMCA in Durham to effectively utilise sport as a means of mobilising their constituency was the result of both scepticism within the organisation, and apathy without.
TL;DR: This paper explored the implications for heterosexual power dynamics of changing representations of shyness for white middle-class women and men using popular self-help, etiquette and advice books as their source of evidence.
Abstract: In this article, I explore the implications for heterosexual power dynamics of changing representations of shyness for white middle-class women and men. Using popular self-help, etiquette and advice books as my source of evidence, I show that as ideas about how to achieve emotional intimacy in heterosexual relationships have changed, so, too, have ideas about white middle-class women's and men's ideal relationship to shyness. What has not changed is the idea that women are primarily responsible for performing the emotional labor deemed necessary to achieve intimacy. In the 1950s, when the arena of courtship was regarded as the last bastion of male privilege, young women were expected to adopt certain shy behaviors to build up young men's self-esteem. In the mid-1970s, when feminists were challenging male privilege, mutual self-disclosure was established as the new standard of intimacy. Yet given that white middle-class men were increasingly afflicted with a shyness labeled "reserve," women were still considered responsible for performing relationship-sustaining emotional labor. In the more conservative 1980s and 1990s, mutual self-disclosure continued to be held up as an ideal, but men were frequently absolved of this responsibility by authors who argued that men were biologically predisposed to be reserved.
TL;DR: It is shown that African Americans received few of the benefits derived from Richmond's move toward improved public health, and that the benefits they did receive were confined to those programs administered by the city's public health nurses.
Abstract: In the early twentieth century, Richmond, Virginia embarked on a campaign to modernize its public health department. One consequence of southern racial attitudes, however, was that African Americans did not constitute a primary constituency for public health intervention. This was based, in part, on strongly held beliefs that African Americans were largely responsible for creating their own particular health problems, either as the result of behavior or inheritance. As a result, improvements in black health were largely incidental to efforts to make southern cities healthier for their white citizens. By exploring the role of race in the development of three campaigns conducted by the Richmond Department of Public Health---the campaigns against typhoid fever, infantile diarrhea, and tuberculosis---this study shows that African Americans received few of the benefits derived from Richmond's move toward improved public health, and that the benefits they did receive were confined to those programs administered by the city's public health nurses. Because of the racial discrimination inherent in the system of healthcare delivery, the potential to dramatically improve the health of the city's blacks was never fully realized and Richmond's African American community benefited only marginally from the city's overall advancement in public health.