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Thursday, October 28, 2021

Tuberculosis Among Negros and Indians, 1920

Tuberculosis Among Negroes and Indians

A press bulletin of the North Carolina Tuberculosis Association says that there is a prevalent belief that a great number of Indians die every year from tuberculosis. The bulletin says that this is not the case among North Carolina Indians. The large majority of our Indian population is confined to one county, that of Robeson, where a few less than 9,000 Red men of the Croatan tribe are engaged in gainful occupation, principally farming. Less than 3,000 will be found in all other counites of the State, Swain and Jackson being the only counties with any appreciable number. With a population of 11,824 Indians, only 12 died during 1920 from tuberculosis. This gives a death rate of 101.4 per 100,000, which is practically the same as the death rate among the white population only two years ago.

“The real menace of tuberculosis in North Carolina is not from the Indian but the negro,” the bulletin says: “With a colored population of 763,407, we have more deaths from tuberculosis among the negroes than we do among the whites, regardless of the fact that the white population is 2 1/4th times larger than the colored. By comparing the death rate for negroes, which is 188.1, with rate of 81.2 for the whites, some idea of the destructive effect of tuberculosis on the colored man will be seen.”

The association accordingly proposed to use a portion of the receipts from the sale of Christmas Seals this year to employ a clinic physician for work among the negroes to the end that the cases may be found early, treatment provided for as many as possible, and that every case discovered may be so instructed and regulated that he will not communicate the disease to others, either white or colored. This is a most commendable aim and there will undoubtedly be general approval of the decision of the association. Tuberculosis among the colored people must be put down both for their own sakes and for the sake of the whites.

From the Raleigh News and Observer, as reprinted in The Smithfield Herald, Oct. 24,1921

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