S. Wright Kennedy: Separate but Dead: Mapping Disease & Segregation in New Orleans, 1880-1915 скачать в хорошем качестве

S. Wright Kennedy: Separate but Dead: Mapping Disease & Segregation in New Orleans, 1880-1915

S. Wright Kennedy (University of South Carolina): Separate but Dead: Mapping Disease & Segregation in New Orleans, 1880-1915 https://ihrdighist.blogs.sas.ac.uk/20... Abstract: In the late nineteenth century, life expectancy rose dramatically in Western societies, yet this unprecedented public health triumph was starkly divided along racial lines in the United States. This talk contextualises broader public health trends through the history of New Orleans from 1880 to 1915, where intersections of race, environment, and disease produced significant disparities, turning health into a privilege rather than a universal benefit. Using historical GIS, the study integrates diverse historical records, including death certificates, census data, topographic surveys, and municipal records, to map inequalities driven by residential segregation and environmental injustice. Despite sanitary improvements such as drainage, sewerage, and clean water infrastructure in the early twentieth century, health benefits overwhelmingly accrued to white residents. African Americans, increasingly segregated into flood-prone and poorly serviced neighbourhoods, faced severe disease burdens, particularly tuberculosis among adults and diarrhoeal diseases among infants. Consequently, Black life expectancy stagnated or even declined, while white life expectancy steadily increased. By 1915, the racial gap in life expectancy at birth exceeded fifteen years, with an eleven-year disparity among those surviving to age fifteen. This research demonstrates that the mortality transition, a hallmark of demographic progress, was fundamentally unequal, shaped by deliberate racial policies and violent grassroots actions, including strategic arson by white residents to establish and enforce racial boundaries. Connecting spatial and demographic analyses, this study underscores the lasting legacies of segregation and the enduring relevance of historical injustices in contemporary discussions about health equity, infrastructure, and urban policy. Bio: S. Wright Kennedy is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, specialising in spatial history and digital public history projects. His research employs geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial analysis to explore historical and contemporary issues related to health, the environment, and socioeconomic inequalities, including studies of epidemics, residential segregation, hurricane recovery, and environmental injustice. Previously, Kennedy led the Mapping Historical New York project at Columbia University and served as project manager of imagineRio at Rice University. He is working on a book-length project, tentatively titled Separate but Dead, examining residential segregation and health disparities in late 19th-century New Orleans. Kennedy also leads digital initiatives such as Mapping Forest to Furniture, Mapping the Lives of Reconstruction-era Alumni of USC (alpha release), and a project analysing the print culture of quotidian weather in 19th- and 20th-century U.S. newspapers.