1910: Health Disparities

“Progressive Reforms”

During the first half of the twentieth century, Baltimore was undergoing a number of municipal reforms aimed at improving life across the city. Public health advocates began arguing for more sustained efforts to fight tuberculosis and small pox. Projects, such as public sanitation, educational visits to communities, the establishment of charity organizations and community hospitals were enacted to varying degrees.

However, hidden beneath these “progressive” reforms were carefully constructed efforts to solidify Baltimore’s segregation into the legal and physical landscapes of the city. Law professor Garrett Power (1982), in writing about Baltimore’s urban reform, noted that “[f]ledgling public health efforts had made no discernable impact on the [B]lack communities - the Negro death rate from both smallpox and tuberculosis was twice that of the white average” (p. 293).

Avoiding Black neighborhoods, public health officials ensured minority neighborhoods would continue to decline economically and remain ghettos that none but those who had no other housing options would be forced to live in.