Crumpler attributed Black disease burden to removable external causes, not innate inferiority

Evidence

One of the most eloquent rejoinders to this theory of Black extinction came from Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the nation’s first Black female doctor. Crumpler was born free and trained and practiced in Boston. But at the close of the war, she joined the Freedmen’s Bureau and worked in the freed people’s communities of Virginia. In 1883, she published one of the first treatises by a Black writer on the burden of disease among Black communities. Her book, which addressed Black women specifically, was intended to serve as a call and a guide for the newly emancipated—a message that they could and would survive, even amid so much hatred and neglect. But Crumpler might as well have been speaking to Congressman Cox directly when she wrote that the nation’s lawmakers “seem to forget that there is a cause for every ailment, and that it may be in their power to remove it.” Those causes were external, she explained, not innate. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1168

Categorization

• SEED: Rebecca Lee Crumpler — first Black female doctor in the US — is a strong profile subject: an early environmental (as opposed to racial) theory of health disparity.
• SHARE: For someone in public health history: Crumpler’s ‘a cause for every ailment… it may be in their power to remove it’ is an early structural-determinants-of-health statement.