>> Hi, everyone.
I'm Kalina [assumed spelling].
And I work in the Learning and
Innovation Office the Library of Congress.
Welcome to today's Online Office
Hours from the Library of Congress.
Today we're going to be exploring the
Spanish flu in the context of World War One.
And we're really glad that you
could join us live or by recording.
If this is your first time joining us, welcome.
If not, welcome back.
For those of you who are just joining us today,
these office hours are meant
to be short, informal sessions.
So we're going to start with a 20-minute
presentation, quick 20-minute presentation.
And the sessions are being recorded.
You'll have the opportunity to talk to
each other, to us, the presenters via chat.
So let's get started using the chat.
If you can just tell us your name.
Where you're joining us from.
And what and whom you teach.
And just type that right in the chat box.
That will sort of help us
drive our conversation later.
And will let us know and let all
of you know who's joining us today.
So as I mentioned earlier,
today's episode is focused
on the Spanish flu in the
context of World War One.
And our presenter's going to
focus specifically a little bit
on the library's manuscript collection.
And this is actually the second office hour
that we have devoted to the Spanish flu.
And we can point you to the resources
for the first session during our talk.
So our presenter today is Ryan Reft.
He's a historian in the library's
Manuscript Division.
If you have any questions or comments
during his presentation at any point,
please post them in the chat box.
We'll also be posting links
as Ryan's presenting.
And we can answer questions
that come up or pose them
to him during our Q&A session
when he's finished.
So now I'm going to pass things over to Ryan.
>> Hello, everyone.
As Kalina said, I'm a historian
in the Manuscript Division.
I focus on domestic policy mostly.
A few years ago, though, I was lucky
enough to curate the World War One exhibit.
And obviously the influenza outbreak
came up as a key part of that.
Oddly, as we'll discuss as we move forward,
is that it's actually not as well documented
as you would have thought considering
how many people died from the epidemic.
So let's get started.
Sorry, here we go.
So there's three main takeaways
from this 20-minute kind
of like quick lecture or whatever.
One is it will demonstrate how
the war facilitated the spread
of the virus through mobilization.
And sometimes in ways you
might not have expected.
Two, how the pandemic was fought
domestically and its effects.
Specifically, it really fell
to the local governments
and the local American Red Cross branch.
And often volunteer organizations led
by middle-class, upper-class women.
Benevolent societies.
Things like that to battle the influenza
outbreak much more than the federal government.
So it really came down to local infrastructure.
And also just to kind of round it out at the
end, to show you how, not only did it kill a lot
of people and injure others long-term.
Because it did have long-lasting
effects for some victims.
It also actually may have reshaped world events.
Which we'll kind of come to at the end.
On your right there just a preview.
That's from our Woodrow Wilson papers.
That's his draft of, the
original draft of his 14 points.
Which was his kind of very idealistic idea for
international relations post-World War One.
You'll notice it looks almost [inaudible].
That's because Wilson wrote in a
shorthand, a idiosyncratic shorthand.
Such that it's very difficult to read today.
But that's how he would have
written out his drafts.
Although he typed mostly, to be honest.
So in January 1918, what's critical to remember
is that the military is building an army
for the first time in a way
that it had not before.
Only about 8 percent of the military
in the Civil War was conscripted.
In World War One they passed the
Selective Service Act in May of 1917.
Which conscripts 72 percent of the military
of the American expeditionary
force that fights in Europe.
It's about an army of 4 million.
About 2 million overseas.
About 400,000 of those 2
million are African-Americans.
Now, one thing to keep in
mind as we move through this,
this is the first time the nation has engaged
in an international conflict on this scale.
So part of what you're going to notice is that
everything is subverted to military concerns.
Even at the, even when you have an
epidemic raging across the U.S. And some
of that's simply because of inexperience.
It's not just necessarily maliciousness
or anything so much as that a lot
of mistakes were made for like, when you're
too kind of singular about what's happening
at the same time it had happened
in the U.S. in this way.
It's very, you can understand why
maybe some mistakes were made.
Home front is just basically oriented
to the wartime production of goods.
World War One was really the most,
first like total war [inaudible]
for the U.S. Some people say
the Civil War to some extent.
But the total war meaning that everything
is geared towards the war effort.
Not just parts of society, but all of it.
Today we have an all volunteer force.
So it's a much different kind
of proposition when we go,
when we enter conflicts internationally.
And you see a map there on the right.
That's World War One exhibit from
our geography and maps division.
It kind of demonstrates to you, you see
a lot, and today you think of the West
as having a lot of military infrastructure.
This is before that, well before that.
That really happens post-World War Two.
So much of the military infrastructure
at this time is in the Midwest and East.
But there are things west of
the Mississippi, as you can see.
So what happens, the mobilization
does a couple of things.
It, one, crowds soldiers into these camps.
So we have a picture of Camp
Funston at Fort Riley here.
56,000 troops.
It was the second largest camp in the U.S. This
is where the virus will first emerge in the U.S.
in Haskell County, which
is not too far from there.
It kinds of migrates over the camp.
And in the camp you have all
these men kind of in these tents.
They have cold conditions.
Overcrowded tents.
Poorly heated.
And inadequate clothing; right?
So all those things are kind of
factors that enable the virus
to gain a foothold and then to explode.
And that's what happens first at Fort Riley.
Now, it's not that the first wave isn't serious.
It is. But you have high
morbidity and low mortality.
Which you're probably familiar
with those terms now.
It just means modest sickness,
but not a lost death necessarily.
And that's, we draw that from a
paper by Anthony Fauci in 2018.
It's worth noting that a lot of what
we know about the influenza outbreak
in 1819 we've learned over
the last three decades or so.
As we'll discuss and you can ask me afterwards.
There's not a comprehensive study
of the pandemic globally until 1927.
So that's, you know, several years
after it kills millions of people.
So there was a lot of, lack of information
in general for many years afterwards.
The second wave is really what does things.
It's [inaudible] August 1918 to December 1918.
It's most, it's very lethal.
High mortality rate.
And what's unusual, perhaps
you know this already,
is that it struck people between 20 and 40.
Which is not the typical vulnerability set.
Usually it's older folks and younger folks.
But they think that what happened
was, and this is a theory.
Because, again, there's lots of
things they don't know about it still.
Is that they think that for younger folks,
you know, stronger more robust immune systems.
When the virus attacked, their immune
system would go into overdrive.
And, as I think John Barry put it
in his book, they would fight a war
and basically collateral
damage would be your lungs.
So it basically just overstimulated
your immune system and caused,
often people didn't die from
the influenza itself.
It was actually secondary pneumonia.
But for our purposes today we'll
just speak about it as influenza.
There was a third wave in the U.S.
from January to April, roughly.
The starting points and end
points would depend on geography.
It's also very lethal.
But not as bad in the second.
But much more than the first.
San Francisco, in particular, suffers
pretty mildly end of the third wave.
And to the right you see a quote
from the John Barry book I'm quoting.
This is by Susan, Susanna Turner who is a
volunteer nurse in Philadelphia who [inaudible].
Arguably the second or third or even
first, depending on the measures you use,
worst hit city in the U.S. "Even if
there was a war, the war was removed
from us, you know, on the other side.
This malignancy, it was right
at our very doors."
You see a lot of quotes about
piling up bodies like cordwood.
It was a very, very rough experience.
Particularly for people in these large cities.
So you might ask, well, why didn't
the federal government do more?
Part of the problem is the USPHS is
not extremely robust [inaudible].
It also aligns with the military.
So it's going to really follow
military concerns during the war.
And even the American Red Cross, which does a
tremendous job during the epidemic stateside.
It also sometimes balanced
military concerns amid the epidemic.
So that's just something that was overwhelming.
Now, Rupert Blue was the head of the, so he was
the civilian surgeon general and head of USPHS.
Not a malicious man, but a political appointee
who many, I guess people who were working
in infectious disease did
not have high regard for.
At least as a scientist.
That doesn't mean they didn't
like him as a person or anything.
But as a scientist or as a medical public
officer they were not supremely impressed
with him.
And he did fail to act quickly
during the outbreak.
In some moments he actually kind
of impeded efforts to fight it.
And in general failed to prepare
the agency for the epidemic.
He does finally take action like mid-October.
But by that point things had kind of spread
to a point that you're just doing triage.
But what they did do is they did
issue these kinds of broad sheets.
Roughly, like, for example, in St.
Louis, which was one of the cities
that responded best to the influenza outbreak.
They distributed about 1.2 million of these
in the metropolitan area themselves via the,
I'm going to call the American
Red Cross the ARC moving forward.
Via the ARC.
And volunteer social welfare groups as well.
You see, it gives you very basic instructions.
Avoid crowds.
If possible, walk to work.
Meaning avoid public transit.
Don't spit on floor or sidewalk.
So these are all fairly obvious now.
But in the moment, quite important
in terms of dissemination.
Because, remember, there's no Twitter.
There's not even radio in this period.
Radio really kicks off in the 1920s.
So your main source of information is
going to be like newspapers and pamphlets.
And newspapers are not covering
the spread of it.
Because there were two laws passed.
The Espionage Act in 1918.
Particularly, the in 1917.
The Sedition Act in 1918.
Which made it kind of a crime to criticize
or impede the draft of the war effort.
And many newspapers viewed to be,
either, basically following those lines
and not mentioning the influenza
outbreak at all.
It's quite, when you do the digging, it's very
difficult sometimes to find information outside
of letters between people about
the influenza outbreak at the time.
Now, this brings us to Dorothy Kitchen O'Neill.
You see on the right, she ends
up as a, Red Cross in France.
She starts out in Kansas City, Missouri.
She's a well off, middle-upper-class woman.
She's in her 20s.
She's indicative of female
volunteerism during the war.
Both overseas for the ARC,
but also domestically.
Many women who'd been involved
in the suffragist movement,
basically most of them stopped
making [inaudible] vote.
And decided the war and enabling mobilization,
working towards mobilization would further
the efforts towards getting the vote.
So many, if not almost all, of the organizations
run during the war domestically are,
women are staffing them critically.
They are staffing the ARC critically.
It's important to note that in many of these
organizations, despite their importance,
they're not getting policy making roles.
So they do lack some level
of, basically, agency.
So just quickly about the American Red
Cross, to give you a sense of them.
By 1918, they have 14 regional divisions.
They have over 3,600 local chapters.
They have over 12,000 staff.
And 20 million members.
You see that photo on the right
is from France in St. Etienne,
where they were treating some wounded soldiers.
The U.S. government depends on them
heavily both overseas and at home.
And the ARC will work with municipal
governments and local, what we call clubwomen.
These are the, like Dorothy Kitchen,
middle class and upper-middle class women
that are engaged in these
progressive era efforts.
Which I'll talk about a little more in a second.
But they serve a critical
role in fighting the epidemic.
So what are [inaudible] progressive
era clubwomen first is, now,
progressive era is roughly
from like 1890 to 1920.
People, it's a very broad umbrella term.
That's use today cover a
variety of issues and people.
So it, just because two people were
progressives, its not the term we would,
the term "progressive" means something different
today then it does when we say progressive era.
In some ways they are connected with the
idea of an expanding government; right?
So there is, obviously this
is a segregated society.
The military is heavily segregated.
The ARC does not allow for
African-American women to serve as nurses.
Which we'll come to in a second.
And clubwomen are segregated.
But, like, so for the General
Federation of Women's Clubs would be the,
for white women that would
be the main organization.
The National Association of Colored
Women would be for African-Americans.
So, in general, they overlapped
in their interests.
So health.
Sanitation.
Anti-vice.
Education.
Americanization.
Meaning kind of [inaudible] for immigrants.
Often suffrage, but only if
there was, there were some women
who did not want to vote, believe it or not.
And also, again, they're all going
to play a key role in mobilization.
On your right, the reason we have the women's
land army is because that's another example
of a domestic wartime mobilization effort.
Putting women in the fields to care
for crops with the men overseas.
The one thing that's notable about that is
it is one of the few women's organizations
or organization's domestically operating that
actually has women in policymaking roles.
So it is run by women, and
it's staffed by women.
So one thing that the ARC does
ahead of the federal government is
that it identifies the fact
that there's an epidemic coming.
And it says we're going to have
6,000 public health nurses.
On your right you see a photo of a public health
nurse treating a young man for an injured ankle.
That's at an ARC local branch.
Often the ARC nurses were going out from
the local branch to help treat people.
So it wasn't just at the branch.
But also outwards.
Remember, many people who died
from the influenza epidemic never
even got to a medical facility.
Now, they called, named these
home defense nurses.
They were women who were disqualified from
war service due to physical disability.
Marriage. And other issues.
Race also disqualified women from
being public health nurses for the ARC.
What that brings us to, well, what
did African-American women do?
Well, African-American nurses are
organized in large part under Ada Thoms.
She had advocated for the admittance of black
nurses to the ARC before the war and during.
She loses that fight.
But she does organize the Blue Circle
nurses who provide critical healthcare
to segregated communities in the U.S. who
lack access to hospitals and healthcare.
These hospitals just as segregated
as the rest of society.
Now, remember, in this time
it's mostly in the South
that the African-American population's living
because the Great Migration
had begun around 1910 or so.
Basically the Great Migration is a movement
of African-Americans from the South often
to Northern industrial sites for work.
And also to escape the Jim
Crow conditions of the South.
But the North had their own
kind of segregation obviously.
So that's in process.
So that's why they operate mostly in the South.
In terms of the ARC, they eventually
do admit black women nurses,
particularly as the influenza
epidemic gains speed.
And they send them to Camp Sherman
and Camp Grant amid the outbreak.
Largely in part because that's where
they had stationed large numbers
of African-American troops.
Go back, one sorry.
A just a real quick know note.
So might ask, well, where do they go for
hospitals if the hospitals are segregated?
Well, they, there was in this progressive era,
and white progressives were
pretty bad about race.
I went go into that now.
But I'm happy to answer that question.
I'm happy to answer questions
if anyone has questions.
So African-Americans were largely on their own.
What they do do is build up a
system, a network of hospitals.
Provident hospital 1891, Chicago.
There's another Provident hospital
established in Baltimore in the 1890s as well.
There's also a Frederick Douglass
Memorial in 1895 in Philadelphia.
So these are just some examples.
It is interesting to note, and I
won't get into the reasons why.
But if you want to know, ask
me in the question period.
The evidence suggests, and
the record keeping was poor,
that African-Americans actually
suffered far less casualties,
fatalities from the influenza than whites did.
And, again, I can expand on that
in the question and answer period.
This brings us back to O'Neill
and the Red Cross.
So she's traveling from Kansas City
to Chicago to New York by train.
She arrives in early September.
Ironically enough, right from the time the
influenza epidemic, the influenza's kind
of making it's way into New
York's bloodstream; right?
She registers with the Red Cross.
She spends a few weeks going out.
And, again, you read her letters, we only
have one digitized, or one for you to see.
But she has a series of letters
from this period.
Her family's clearly well off.
They know people like Al Jolson and poets.
Her father comes and visits.
They drink with writers,
things like that, at dinner.
So this is a woman, again, very
indicative of these things.
So the, just a quote on the right.
"The fall styles of New York
pale in comparison with uniforms.
Every few minutes on Fifth Avenue a
woman goes by in a different uniform.
And father looks astonished
and says, 'Now what's that?'
Army nurses in blue.
Red Cross nurses in red-lined capes.
Women's Telephone Unit.
Motor Corps.
YMCA and the Red Cross Overseas crowd.
Very startling.
Did I tell you that we have
horizon blue on our collars?"
Now, I only share that quote
for like two or three reasons.
One, to demonstrate how prevalent the
mobilization was on the streets of New York
at this time and in other cities.
But particularly New York because
it's a big embarkation point.
Two, to demonstrate some of her personality.
Which is, O'Neill was someone who could
appreciate fine clothing and style and fashion.
And, three, again, women are critical in
all of this mobilization and overseas.
Without them the war is just not going to work.
So this is her life.
She goes up to Quebec to take
off on a ship around September.
In the lower left-hand corner, you can see
her describe, on the left side of the page.
I know it's a little small.
You can see her describe some of her experience.
If you look at the right,
in bottom of the right hand,
you can see "It has been a voyage from hell."
And I only make note to tell
[inaudible] exclamation point.
And you see that SS Veritus stationery.
That's the ship she was on.
It happened that she was on quite a bad voyage.
Basically, "It has been a strange voyage.
Picture the combination of Spanish influenza
breaking out in combination with one
of the worst storms in two years.
One of the ships in the convoy
sunk, but the crew was saved."
She falls sick for a week herself.
She contracts it.
About 40 girls become sick.
And four of them die on the ship itself.
One, you can see how they're
actually carrying the disease
over to Europe via their
efforts to help the troops.
And the convoy, which includes
troopships, will do the same.
She herself credits ARC nurses with saving
her life on the ship and those of others.
One of the troopships in her convoy
suffered 48 deaths in just two hours
from the same or similar outbreak of the flu.
This is a longer quote.
And I'm just, I'm going to go,
run down to the third sentence.
"I feel dreadfully about Ruth McGreagor,
one of our girls who died of flu.
I had seen a lot of her in New
York in these last two days.
She came from Indianapolis.
She and the first are buried at sea."
I read that to tell you, one, when you died
at sea of influenza, there was no burial.
You were put out to the sea.
It's kind of a very depressing
way to go obviously.
But also just to show you that
Ruth McGreagor from Indianapolis.
Again, it was drawn upon women from all parts
of the U.S. for these volunteer organizations.
Particularly overseas.
And so it does touch both the epidemic itself,
but also in these kind of
social connections as well.
And that's a troopship.
From, that's October 30th,
1918, the J.C. Crosby.
You'll notice, you can see how this would
be a great purveyor of disease; right?
You have a lot of people on board.
Close quarters.
It's, we carried the disease over there.
And what's interesting is we
probably carried over a milder version
and then carried back a more, we
carried over to Europe the influenza.
It spread there.
Went through a series of changes
where a more vicious strain adapts.
And it probably comes back with troops later.
So, you know, like a lot of things
about the influenza is we can't track
everything [inaudible] we have from it.
Now, it's not just the actual
fighting of the war and mobilization.
It's also other things that
cause the disease to spread.
Like you see there, the liberty
loan drive button.
There were four of them.
They raised about $20 billion
during the war to fight the war.
And these liberty loan parades
end up seeding the disease.
So you see the, like nationally you were really,
they were really pressuring people to buy bonds.
If you didn't buy a bond, you were a traitor.
That sort of thing.
You see Wilson there on the right in DC.
That their parade, DC, is actually one of
the worst cities hit during the epidemic.
These actually operated like, and
that link there, if you're interested,
will take you to a page, silent film
of Wilson at the New York parade.
The places that held these liberty loan
parades in September and October, usually were,
the parades themselves were followed
by a devastating wave of influenza.
That happens in Philadelphia
within three days of theirs.
Every bed in the city is filled.
People are trying to bribe
families, trying to bribe hospitals
and nurses $100 to get their loved ones in.
New York City has a parade.
And even though they had
had machine interference
in their department of public health.
Which was world renowned at the time.
They have a long history of surveillance.
Isolation.
And quarantine.
And so they were able to kind
of stave it off and had one
of the lowest death rates on the East Coast.
San Francisco holds their parade on October 6th.
And it one of the worst death
rates on the West Coast.
And one of the worst death
rates of the pandemic overall.
So, again, the mobilization had a number
of ways that it can kind of affect things.
So, in general, it did not
hit everywhere the same.
East Coast and the South get it the worst.
Particularly Boston, Pittsburgh, Richmond, New
Orleans and DC probably get the worst epidemics.
San Francisco, West Coast is the worse.
L.A. actually kind of intervenes quickly.
Cancels its parade.
And they don't suffer nearly
as much as San Francisco.
The Midwest is hit the least.
St. Louis and Chicago have
very effective responses.
But I would just remind everyone
that, even if you had a good response,
like Cook County Hospital, one
of the main hospitals in Chicago,
suffered in October something, 40 percent
mortality rate for all influenza cases.
So that just tells you how bad it was.
I would, you know, the factors tend
to be proximity to military camps.
If you are poor, obviously.
And then your local leadership mattered a lot.
You know, and sometimes local leadership
could even act correctly, like in Pittsburgh.
They did do all the things right.
But they believed that, one, they
staggered their social distancing measures.
Which may have had effect.
And also the air pollution of the city
made the population much more vulnerable
to disease than elsewhere.
At the same time in Paris,
you see the [inaudible].
And this is the point, this is another
point that's critical to number of dead.
For many, for some people the
disease had long-term effects.
Like neurological effects.
We've seen that in a number
of people historically.
We also know from a 2008 study that
it could also lead to a heart attack,
which we'll talk about in a second, long-term.
You see here a quote there.
"There are about 400 deaths
a week from the flu."
And she, and on the left, she's going to wards.
And they plenty of men who are stricken from it.
So it's exerting itself overseas as well.
Immigrant communities, despite
the fact that, you know,
that nativism was very high during
the war through the patriotism.
It's, and unusually they were not scapegoated.
Which is very, which is odd.
Because that happens all
the time in U.S. history.
I mean, point to several examples.
But I won't waste your time right now.
Much like a black community,
immigrant communities tended to depend
on their local newspapers
and hospital infrastructure.
Like Boston's Beth Israel.
And Baltimore's Hebrew Hospital.
On your right you see a poster from that period.
Americanization Day.
The idea that, if you wanted to allow
Americanization, and, of course,
I'm happy to talk about that
in question and answer.
But that's kind of related
to the nativism at the time.
This idea that you had
to be an American-American rather
than a hyphenated American.
So this brings us to full
circle to Woodrow Wilson.
So Wilson famously goes to Versailles
to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles.
His 14 points.
He falls ill on April 3rd.
He's hit with the third wave
of the virus probably.
Takes him several days to recover.
Now, he has had much of this, much of the
negotiations really sticking his heels
in on not applying reparations on Germany.
Not giving away their military.
Not giving away their land
necessarily to France and elsewhere.
He says like he's going to go
home if the others don't agree.
He gets sick.
And literally a day or two afterwards, he
basically gives in on all these points.
Now, it's fair to say that there are
historians like Margaret McMillan who argue
that Germany never actually paid the
reparations they were supposed to.
And if you compare them to other
reparations that were assigned during
that period, they actually weren't severe.
But from a political standpoint domestically
in Germany, particularly the inflation
that struck the country after the war.
It's least a very, very strong rhetorical device
to kind of marshal support for your cause.
Which obviously some less than political
leaders did in Germany at that time.
Wilson then tries when he comes back to go
around the U.S. and campaign to get the Treaty
of Versailles ratified by the Senate.
He suffers from a heart attack four
months later and never recovers.
And the treaty is never approved either.
On your right, you're going to see, you see a
picture of Clemenceau, Wilson and Lloyd George.
The first from France.
The last from England or the UK, excuse me.
All of them contracted the virus.
And yet only Wilson was really waylaid because
Clemenceau and Lloyd had a much milder version.
And Dr. Cary Grayson, you
know, comments on the illness.
"I have never seen the President
look so worn and tired.
He could not remember without an effort
what the council had done in the forenoon."
And that's just basically
the overview of the epidemic.
And I'm happy to take questions.
>> Great. Thanks so much, Ryan.
There's a lot to learn there.
And we got some really good
questions and comments in the chat.
So I'm just going to go through
the ones that I saw.
And please feel free to add more
into the chat box or any thoughts
that come to you as Ryan's talking.
Please share.
So, well, the first thing that Mike wants
everyone to know is, just pointing folks
to a blog post that the Learning
and Innovation Office wrote.
And I'll put that in the chat box again.
About the Spanish flu.
But Kayle asks, so you were talking about
how newspapers sort of were hesitant
or didn't talk about the epidemic a lot.
And so she asks, so papers avoided talking
about the outbreak because they were worried
about infringing on those espionage laws?
Did any papers get in trouble for
running those types of stories?
>> Well, I think what you find is
they don't really run those stories.
They might, what they do run in
some of like the local areas, like,
so and so is sick with influenza.
So and so is sick with influenza.
And when it does really kind of outbreak,
they do start covering it a little bit.
But I can tell you from, so when we curated
the World One exhibit, we put together a series
of headlines as our timeline
using old newspapers.
And it was immensely difficult to
find headlines about influenza.
You know, it, one of the issues is the USPHS
never designated it a reportable disease.
So there aren't like, only big cities and only
24 states kept even records of the disease
that were good enough to
enter the federal databases.
And, you know, just the, both the chaos of
mobilization and the disease itself also kind
of undermined record keeping as well.
So it's, that's one of the reasons
it's taken so long to draw upon,
to draw conclusions from the epidemic itself.
>> Got it.
Thank you.
And somewhat along those
lines of record keeping.
Mike says, I've read on places
like CDC website that worldwide
about 500 million became
infected with this virus.
With up to 50 million killed worldwide.
Including up to 675,000 Americans.
And he's curious as to how
historians compiled these numbers.
And how did they pool together resources?
>> Good question.
It's funny because the numbers have changed
as we've grown further away from it.
They have drawn, they basically, they've
done like in the last 20 or 30 years,
they've done a lot of studies that have
really expanded our knowledge about.
And I think our knowledge about how we
understand environmental factors also affect
people in pandemics.
So historians have kind of gathered
this information slowly over time.
There's a great archive online that's
not affiliated with the library.
But I'm going to mention anyways.
Because they've done, they've covered 50 cities.
And they provide essays for each one of them.
And they provide numbers as well.
And death rates to give you
a better sense of things.
And some of the historians, you know, like
even a historian who's written as recently
as John M. Barry wrote "The Great Influenza"
upon which I'm drawing some of this lecture.
Even some of the stuff they
say in there has been updated.
So, for example, New York, they
thought got hit really hard.
And it did.
But then in subsequent years they've
been able to do studies going back,
looking at, I guess data from [inaudible].
On the Eastern Seaboard, they had
the lowest death rate out there.
So a lot of it's come after the fact.
Even in 2018, particularly, was a year that
a lot of public health experts went back
and looked again as a way to kind of reevaluate.
And that's when Anthony Fauci
wrote that 2018 piece.
And, again, that archive is
called the Influenza Encyclopedia.
It's really a great, great archive.
They put it together in 2012
and updated it in 2016.
And basically it's just been, people had
to search and search through documents
at federal archives and state
archives and municipal archives.
Kind of patch together this information.
A quick thing, I just saw a
question about Pittsburgh.
I'll just answer that quickly.
Pittsburgh did act very quickly actually.
And very well.
They worked very close with the ARC.
The problem was because of
the, they think that, one,
they didn't institute enough
social distancing early on.
And, two, probably more importantly,
it that, because of all the industry
in Pittsburgh, the air quality was very low.
And that the population had
developed what we now would, you know,
refer to as kind of vulnerabilities
or comorbidities among them.
And so, when the influenza struck,
it struck them particularly hard even though
the city still did what it was supposed to.
Which is just evidence of could do everything
right and still have a terrible outcome.
And yet it would have been even
worse had you not done anything.
>> Great. Thanks for staying and answering that.
Liza has asked, so you were talking
about African-American fatality rates.
And them being lower.
So Liza asks, are records of African-American
deaths during this period accurate?
>> Probably, they have the same level
of accuracy as the other records.
And, but here's the thing.
So I'm [inaudible] article, I'm
forgetting the writer's name right now.
Basically, in 2010, "Public Health Reports" put
out this really great kind of supplemental issue
in April that had a number of articles.
And there was one in there about the
African-American experience during the war.
And they think that the low numbers can
be attributed to one of three things.
One, it could be underreporting.
Because clearly the white population did
not pay attention to the black population.
And that's just, that's how it was.
I mean, that's why there's a whole
separate black press and a white press.
Now, the black press tended to depict the
influenza as definitely damaging and severe.
But they also noted that African-Americans
were being struck much less by it.
Now, the only issue with that
is that, you know, that the,
if the white newspapers were being kind of
self-censoring because of these laws in the war.
I would guess that the African-American
newspapers would be doing the same
to some extent as well.
African-Americans did debate on the efficacy
of joining the military and fighting the war
because of discrimination and
citizenship rights they had been denied.
And yet at the same time the Du Bois
and then Charles Hamilton Houston
and other civil rights leaders saw the war
as a critical moment, much life suffragists,
to kind of gain these rights
that had been long denied them.
So it's hard to say with the newspapers.
But the other thing is, and I've seen this.
The third thing is that it's possible
that the segregation kind of served
as this kind of quarantine in itself.
By staying away from the white population,
they actually protected themselves.
A very perverse benefit, admittedly.
But that, those are the three main explanations
for those lower death, I
should say there's a fourth.
It's also possible, and this is
Alfred Crosby Jr. wrote a book
about what he called, about
the epidemic in 1989.
And argued that he believed that
they had contracted the first wave.
Many African-Americans had contracted the
first wave of the virus that was milder.
And so had built up an immunity.
So when the second wave and third wave
come, it just didn't affect them as much.
But, again, those are all just kind of theories.
It's hard to say if any of them
actually an authoritative answer.
>> That's helpful to know.
Actually, along those lines, Amy
asked, as you're talking about sort
of underreporting could be a possibility.
She asks, is the lack of documentation
a factor in the minimal discussion
about the epidemic in school history textbooks?
So do you have any thoughts on that?
Of if anyone in the audience
has thoughts, please share them.
>> Yeah, that's a good question.
I've wondered that myself.
And, in fact, I've even asked the
creator of that archive I mentioned,
the Influenza Encyclopedia that question.
I'm waiting to hear back from them.
I don't know why, you know, in the Barry
book, he mentions that there's no, one,
there's no international study
of the epidemic till 2007.
There's only like really,
there's like, we've got movies.
Got movies like "Contagion."
You know "Outbreak."
Even planet, the new planet,
the most recent "Planet
of the Apes" iteration about
fictional pandemics.
But there's no movie on the influenza.
Which is really real and killed, as
someone pointed out, 675,000 Americans.
And to be honest, they say 50 million
is like kind of the mid-number.
The upper level estimates are
like 100 million globally.
But the fact that it goes from 50 to
100 tells you how little they're sure.
So it's hard to say as to why the public memory,
it's also possible, I have seen explanations
that people considered the epidemic
just part of the war experience.
And so it kind of gets folded under there.
It could also be that people
were just traumatized.
You know, a lot, I mean, 675,000 people
is a lot of people to lose in a year.
But at the same time you don't have the same
kind of media infrastructure we have today
that would have conveyed that information
to everywhere at the same time.
So I'd say the last thing is I think
historians, and I am an historian.
And I will admit to this as well.
I think historians are not great about
incorporating medical or pandemic kind
of issues into historical decisions.
I think that there has been, we're much
better at dealing with nuts and bolts.
And medicine and science sometimes I
think, "confuse" isn't the right word.
But it can really disturb a
narrative that you're working on.
So I think historians probably
need to get better about including
that sort of information in these things.
>> That's a really interesting kind of
insight that you just raised about some
of the things that historians focus on.
And the kind of complications that they present.
I think, I don't know if you saw Jen's comment.
But she just added, I think in
response to what you were saying.
She said, I had also heard the silence
about the epidemic also had to do
with not representing a nation
as weak during the war.
And the naming of it with a political weapon.
>> Well, the naming of it from any
understanding is, you mean the Spanish flu?
What that's a reference to is
because Spain was not in the war.
So their press was not censored.
So they were reporting on it.
So it became, they end up
getting the designation simply
because they were the messenger.
That's why I haven't used the term in this much
because it kind of, now, just so we're clear.
Nobody knows where this thing started.
They used to think it was Kansas.
But now they think it could have been France.
Could have been China.
It could have been a lot of places.
They really don't know where it began.
So it's hard to say.
>> Thanks.
Mike had another question.
He said, I've heard that some schools closed
during the pandemic while others did not.
Do you know anything about school closures?
>> Yeah. It just depended
on, like everything else.
It depended on the city in
which were you living.
Like San Francisco.
San Diego.
L.A. They all closed down their schools.
Philadelphia does as well eventually.
So many places did.
There are probably places that didn't as well.
It just depended on your local leadership.
>> And Cheryl asked about machine politics.
I think you talked about probably
a little later in your talk.
And she said she'd like to know more
about the role of machine politics
in exacerbating the spread of disease.
>> Yeah, I'll give you two examples.
Philadelphia was run by the
Dare [phonetic] machine.
Edwin Dare.
Edwin Vare, excuse me.
Not Dare, Vare.
They had appointed a man named
Krusen as their pub health official.
Who was not [inaudible] person or anything.
But he was not a public health official.
And he was not someone who
acted with any urgency.
And they literally two days before everything
just kind of goes to hell in Philadelphia,
he tells everyone there's
nothing to worry about.
And in reality between like September 19th and
November 1, 11,000 white Philadelphians die
and almost 900 black Philadelphians.
And I only mention the difference
there to the to point earlier
about the discrepancy between
white and black deaths.
So, you know, they, the other thing is the
machine there really was geared towards making
the machine rich and not the governance.
So all kinds of facts.
Overcrowding housing due to the contracting
and construction and other things really.
And the fact that you had a diffuse
authority divided between the mayor
who was basically under the
thumb of the machine.
Precinct leaders and others.
Basically diffused authority.
So even if you wanted to act
right away, you couldn't.
Now, the contrary example would be New York.
Tammany Hall, you've probably
heard of Tammany Hall.
It's a famous machine that ran
in New York City for a long time.
They regained power that January.
And they, and New York at the time had a
world-renowned public health department.
Like one of the best in the world.
They kind of denuded of all their experts
and put a bunch of patrons higher.
Such as they had a bunch of guys in there, and
they were mostly men, who basically cared more
about political ambitions than science.
Now, despite that, despite that kind of rule of,
crippling of that organization or that agency.
New York also has a long
history of public health
because it's been a port city for a long time.
It's been a main entryway for, you know,
hundreds, you know, millions of immigrants.
So that's something they're quite attuned to.
So they had infrastructure
of, you know, of surveying,
isolating and quarantining populations.
And that kicked in.
And so I think what I'd say is that, even
though New York had the lowest death rate
on the East Coast.
My guess is that the machine interference didn't
harm it enough that they couldn't respond.
But probably that's a worse outcome
than if they hadn't interfered.
So the outcome probably would
have been even better
if they just left the department
of public health alone.
So those, and, you know,
someone might ask about Chicago.
Chicago did not have a machine yet.
Chicago doesn't have a machine.
Chicago is odd in its machine doesn't
really coalesce until the 1930s.
So it's kind of, it's not really run
the same way as these East Coast cities.
Manhattan machines.
>> Thanks so much.
Thank you everyone for asking questions.
We still have some time.
So if you would like to pose
more questions, please do.
In the meantime, while we're waiting for
any last, any final questions to come in.
Ryan, I wondered if you could just say a
little bit about your sort of career path
or kind of this sort of journey to
becoming I guess a "historian" and kind of.
[ Inaudible Comment ]
Yeah, if you wouldn't mind.
Just for [inaudible] out there.
[ Multiple Speakers ]
>> Sure.
>> Who, you know, are teaching history.
Or may have students who, you know,
might become historians one day.
>> Well, I was a public schoolteacher
for about ten years.
So I can say in college, I just enjoyed history.
I didn't, I think some people
dream of being something.
I didn't really dream of being anything.
Just, you know, I wanted
to do something I was into.
So immediately after college
I moved to New York City.
And began teaching in New York public
schools there for about nine or ten years.
During that time, I just developed
greater interest in history.
And I wanted to do, basically I went to grad
school at NYU and Columbia during nights
and got a couple Master's degrees.
And decided I wanted to do a little bit
more than just, than teach in the classroom.
Which I enjoyed a lot.
But I wanted just to do something different.
So I applied to graduate school in California.
And went out there to UCSD.
Studied and finished up my Ph.D. and then.
Sorry, my computer shut down for a second.
Studied, I got a Ph.D. and then was lucky
enough there was an opening at the library.
I started working there.
Which still involves a lot of
teaching, quite honestly, in public.
I got the, teaching is a great career.
I think it teaches you a lot.
One, I have no problem public speaking.
Two, I know how to organization information
to audiences so they understand it.
And, you know, remember, when, and
all, those of you who are teachers,
you know that you have a wide range
of learning abilities in a classroom.
You've got some kids who really
struggle or like do well at one thing.
And other ones that do well at everything.
And you have to reach all of them.
So I think teaching really, really enabled me
to, gave me the ability to, one, speak concisely
and clearly to audiences about issues
that sometimes can be kind of complex.
And kind of get at the main point of them.
Although sometimes I ramble
on as I just did now.
>> [inaudible], well, I think
that's great for us to hear.
And, you know, it's always interesting
to hear different professionals
paths to their current job.
And kind of how, what different
turns a career path can take.
>> Yeah. I'd like to add one thing.
Is that I think one thing that, if you do want
to be a historian, you need
to practice is writing.
And writing is, I think a lot of people, they
read something, oh, man, whoever wrote this.
I can't believe they came up with this.
Whatever you read has been edited so many
times and been drafted so many times.
And that person has really had to work at it.
Writing is something you
just have to do every day.
So like if you really think that's
something you want to do, and I'll be honest,
academic history is really tough now.
Because, one, in the wake of what's
going on now, there's a lot of schools
that are probably going to
close or reduce their staffing.
And staffing is, and hiring in the field
has been really bad for a long time.
So it'll probably get worse.
But if you do want to be a writer or something
along those lines, you should start a blog.
Or contact a blog and write repeatedly.
You have to write a lot.
Like it's a muscle.
And I, this is a cliche.
Because it's, but you really
do have to work at it.
You have to get to the point,
I don't know if you,
you don't have to do it every
day like some people say.
But do you have to do it frequently.
And maybe, and sometimes you have to even think,
sometimes I know when I write
stuff it actually helps me.
I've written three pieces on influenza
just to help me understand what it was.
So for some people that's the way it works.
But I would say that that is, and I think
there's some [inaudible] for some people
in just writing itself and
kind of grasping an idea.
That's the one thing I'd add to that, sorry.
>> No, that's great advice.
I think that's sort of universal
advice that we can all take.
Kayle says, a mentor always
tells her writing is editing.
So [inaudible] people's thoughts on writing.
Well, thank you so much,
Ryan, for this wonderful talk.
And for giving us this additional glimpse
or window into this moment in time.
And specifically putting it
in the context of the war.
Really appreciate it.
And I'm sure listeners today and also
listeners who listen to the recording
of this will also get great benefit from it.
I just want to let everyone know that what's
coming up for next week's online office hours.
So starting next week we'll be
moving to a weekly office hour.
So we'll be back here on
Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. Eastern.
And then we'll be every Tuesday after that.
Same time, 2:00 p.m. Eastern.
So this Tuesday, June 2nd we'll be joined
by staff from the American Folk Life Center.
And they'll be talking about the
Occupational Folk Life Project.
So please feel free to come back.
Join us. It should be a really
interesting conversation.
And look forward to seeing you,
[inaudible] seeing you all here.
And hear your questions and
continue our conversation.
So thanks again, Ryan.
And thanks, again, everyone
for joining us today.
>> Thanks for putting this together, everyone.
And thanks for attending, everyone.