for the frontline workers began to turn into hatred and enmity, and Jones and Allen feared they were losing the opportunity to leverage the Black community’s volunteerism into white support for the Abolitionist cause. They published A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, to detail the work of the volunteers and to counter claims like those Carey made. The volunteers were providing an essential service. Demands for patient care had far exceeded the city’s public services capabilities, and as the local government collapsed, Black volunteers stepped up to provide invaluable assistance. The assumption of racial immunity minimized the risk many volunteers were assuming, while accusations of extortion fostered white hostility towards essential volunteers and nurses. Jones and Allen detailed accounts of this hostility: “a white man threatened to shoot us is we passed by his house with a corpse: we buried him three days after” (20). It was profoundly unjust that volunteers should face the threat of violence as they retrieved bodies and transported or cared for the sick in white neighborhoods. Nurses were often the only companions available to the sick whose families had been wiped out or had fled the city, deserting them. Jones and Allen’s Narrative of the Proceedings detailed the generosity and altruism of Black nurses and volunteers. In the end, they argued, it was the Black community who came together to serve the city even as many of its wealthy white citizens fled. Unquestionably, the uncertainty, trauma, and life-and-death stakes of the 1793 Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic came together to heighten tensions in the city, even if the racism the Black volunteers faced does not seem unusual nor surprising. It reflects a history larger than the epidemic. The difference of opinion between contagionists and non-contagionists is easier to dissect in hindsight. Simply, it is evidence of limited biomedical knowledge. Neither Rush nor Currie were wholly right or wrong. Currie’s assertion that the disease came to Philadelphia via the sea was well-founded. And while he may have been incorrect about direct person-to-person transmission, Yellow Fever is contagious with mosquitos as their vector. Rush’s insistence on climatic changes was not entirely off-base either, as the arrival of seasonal cold eliminated the mosquitos, offering the city some – if temporary – relief. . . . It is interesting to imagine how the lessons of the COVID-19 Pandemic will help us prepare for or mitigate against future disease outbreaks. For example, subsequent generations might have learned from the skepticism towards urban living of Philadelphians like Ebenezer Hazard in the wake of 1793. Historian J.H. Powell quotes him as suggesting that America reject “fashions of the Old World in building great cities.” He argued against the 59
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