Black Baptist women proactively discussed venereal disease using sociological data rather than moralism alone.

Evidence

The WC’s interest in the findings of social scientists encouraged the introduction of two new committees—child welfare and vital statistics. The first report of the committee on vital statistics compared mortality rates for blacks and whites in relation to nutrition. In 1920, the committee produced an informative report that identified diseases prevalent among blacks, made correlations between life expectancy and overcrowded housing, and assessed the nutritional benefits of foods commonly found in the diets of blacks. The report also urged the importance of sex education for boys and girls and concluded that the safest foundation “for a healthy sex life is an individual and social morality combined with full knowledge of sexual realities.” The report called for knowledge of both reproduction and venereal disease. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 821

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Supports my broader writing on moral panics: the WC treated venereal disease as a health/social matter with sex education, countering the contemporary blanketing silence over the subject.
• XREF: Connects to Elizabeth Fee’s research on Baltimore venereal disease and ‘innocent’ versus ‘guilty’ victims framing in the following passage. — connects to: Black Baptist women wielded respectability as a weapon against biological racism — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 882; Black Baptist women’s church work absorbed secular Progressive-era sociological methods — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 791

Broader Connections

• Black Baptist women’s church work absorbed secular Progressive-era sociological methods #expands (0.86) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 791
• Black Baptist women wielded respectability as a weapon against biological racism #qualifies (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 882