Community and Care: Black Civil Society and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 in the United States

Abstract During the deadliest pandemic of the twentieth century, the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918–1920, African Americans in the United States appeared to be an especially vulnerable population. The health effects of racialized segregation, produced by congested housing conditions, environmental racism, and exclusion from or discrimination in healthcare services, threatened a devastating situation during the second wave of the pandemic in late 1918. This paper argues that a network of Black civil society organizations and activists sprang into action to ameliorate the worst effects of this public health emergency, and that it was able to provide care and relief that would have largely been denied by white-led public and private institutions. This network had been built up in the preceding decades and can therefore serve as an important model and informational resource in utilizing community-centered planning to prepare marginalized peoples for the spread of pandemic disease.