Nadia Clifton (she/her): I’m Maria Esterino. I’m vice Provost for University libraries and university librarian here at Chapel Hill, and it’s my great pleasure and also honor to welcome you to historic Wilson Library as we open the new. The excuse me as we open the new scholarship on the Us. South Wilson Library Fellow Symposium.
This capstone Symposium celebrates the Southern studies doctoral fellowships here at Wilson Library. Both the Fellowships and the Symposium today and tomorrow are generously made possible by a grant from the Watson Brown Foundation. Just want to make sure to thank them, even though they couldn’t be here today.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): When I first joined the University libraries in 2017. I very that was as associate university librarian for special collections here at Wilson Library. I saw very quickly that we had a really incredible opportunity to consolidate our existing fellowships into a robust program.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and that we could grow that program in exciting ways. And so again, I’m and I’m really grateful to Tad Brown and the Watson Brown foundation for understanding that vision so clearly. Nadia Clifton (she/her): so early, and supporting it really from the beginning with with the grant that I mentioned.
Since 2019 the grant has allowed us to welcome 57 fellows
Nadia Clifton (she/her): from over 30 different universities to our campus. some of whom you’ll hear from tomorrow. I have to turn to the program for a quick minute, because there’s 2 things here. One is. Please make sure to look at the program for the schedule for tomorrow.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And I hope you’ll come back. You’re welcome to drop in and out as your day allows. The other thing is that I made a mistake in my message to the University librarian. Where I said there were 49 fellowships I missed a whole year. So it’s actually 57. And that’s really incredible, especially considering we had a pandemic in the middle of that right?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I’m sorry. Good mistake. Yeah, I’m glad it was trending in that direction. Right?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I also should say that we have had fellows from England, Scotland, and Ireland, and I don’t know Southern studies, I guess, are big in the British Isles, but that’s like our that. I wanted to point that out as well.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So the Southern studies doctoral fellowships complemented our existing fellowships at the time.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And really, what we wanted to do was to target the core community of applicants that we were seeing for those fellowships doctoral students and candidates. and supersize the opportunities that we can make available to them through increased funding and through more intentional engagement with our expert staff. It’s really that combination, right? The collections are here and usable. But it’s it’s when you connect with our staff
Nadia Clifton (she/her): their knowledge and their expertise. And frankly, their interest, their enthusiasm for your research questions. It really makes things happen in a different way. And that’s what we were really striving for. These and all our fellowships are investments in the success of emerging scholars like the ones you’ll hear from tomorrow.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and other researchers we fund who are seeking to make meaningful use of the collections that we steward.
They’re a manifestation of our dedication, not just to the preservation and discovery of these collections, but to the innovative scholarship that they make possible. The program has also catalyzed the growth of our fellowships program at Wilson with the support of other individuals and organizations.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): This has included a grant from the Institute of Museum and library services to develop a teaching fellowship which will run through next year, and in 2022, a $500,000 matching pledge from the William Arkina, and charitable trust to permanently endow a set of these research and teaching fellowships.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Once the match is realized. The endowment will allow us to continue to provide scholars, students, artists, and other researchers, with the financial and intellectual support necessary to really, deeply and meaningfully engage and explore Wilson’s historic collections, and to produce the kind of scholarly work that generates both new understandings of our history, and hopefully also visions of our shared future.
So if you would like to find out how to support that, it’s handily in your program, if you would like to help us with that match in any way. So please take a look and and learn more about it.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So a program like this really takes a tremendous number of people to manage, and many of them are in the room. I hope you’ll get a chance to meet them and talk to them, but tonight I need to extend some very specific thanks. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Where is Matt Tirie
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Maturi? Would you stand up? Nadia Clifton (she/her): Matt? Is our manuscripts, research and instruction librarian as well as our fellowships? Coordinator, and he’s been my partner in developing this program and running it really from the beginning. So, Matt, thank you
Nadia Clifton (she/her): for saying yes when I was like, hey? You want to work on this for me? You didn’t really know what was going to come your way, but you’ve done such. You really have been the heart of making this what it is. So thank you, Matt. Nadia Clifton, where’s Nadia?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Hey, Nadia? Nadia Clifton (she/her): Nadia has provided support in so many different ways since becoming special collections, engagement librarian in 2,019. So thank you, Nadia, for all of the positive and creative energy you’ve brought to the project.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Both Nadia and Matt, along with Allison, Barnett, Katy Fanfani, and Elizabeth Ott made up the core of the planning for this symposium, and you’ll read more about more of the people involved also in your program.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Alright. So finally, I want to also extend really sincere thanks to our campus co-presenters, our longtime partners in the Southern Oral History program and our friends at the center for the study of the American South. They will be hosting a closing reception tomorrow at the Love House on Franklin Street so hopefully, if you can’t make it to anything else, come to the party
Nadia Clifton (she/her): alright. So now it’s my really great pleasure to welcome Raoud Nicocea Lopez to to introduce our keynote speaker. Raoul is associate professor of social medicine in the School of Medicine. Here at Unc. And also an adjunct associate professor of history.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): His work focuses on the history of medicine and science, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Latin America. He’s committed to bringing non-us voices and sources to bear on health and medical research.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Raoud is author of a History of Family Planning in Twentieth Century Peru, published by Unc. Press and La Planifica’s Young Familiar Al Peruisi Lavente, published by IEP. And the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Raoul is president of the Peruvian Society for history, of science, technology, and health, and is currently writing a book about the history of cancer care in the Andean region. He holds a master’s in History of Technology from Georgia Institute of Technology.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and received a Ph. D. From Mcgill University in Canada. He’s also, I believe, the faculty Moderator, Faculty Moderator for the Bullet Club. Is that correct? Yeah, which we collaborate quite extensively. The Bullet Club on the history of Medicine here on our campus as well. So please join me in welcoming Raul Nicocea Lopez to introduce tonight’s keynote speaker. Thank you.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): That was really sweet and above and beyond. Thank you, Maria, it’s it’s really a pleasure to be among friends here at at Wilson Library.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Good evening and welcome once again. Like Dr. Estarina said. My name is Laurel Nico. Chair. Lopez. I’m a historian. I’m I’m from Peru. I’ve been here
Nadia Clifton (she/her): at the School of Medicine for about 13 years now, and those are the most important bits about me. Tonight. It is a joy and an honor to introduce my friend, Dr. Richard Mizell. Nadia Clifton (she/her): whose work at the intersection of environmental history and
Nadia Clifton (she/her): chronic illness casts important and urgent light on long-standing health disparities that shape the lives of racialized communities in this country, while at the same time showing us that Nadia Clifton (she/her): there are many different forms of strength and resilience demonstrated by these very same communities. For decades.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Dr. Mizell is the author of Backwater Blues, the 1 27 Mississippi River flood in the African-american imagination and co-editor of resilience and opportunity lessons from the US. Gulf coast. After Katrina and Rita.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): he has also curated an amazing traveling exhibit for the National Library of Medicine, called This Lead, is killing us a history of citizens fighting, lead, poisoning in their communities. Nadia Clifton (she/her): You can also find that online, by the way.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): A new project of his deals with diabetes. Nadia Clifton (she/her): visibility, and race. In the twentieth century Nadia Clifton (she/her): another project involves a new baby. and Nadia Clifton (she/her): Dr. Miselle earned A. BA. In history from North Carolina Central University. Nadia Clifton (she/her): an Ma. In history, yeah. Yeah.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): An MA. In US. History from American University, and A. Ph. D. In US. And the History of Medicine from Rutgers University. Nadia Clifton (she/her): He is now associate Professor of History at the University of Houston, but keeps close ties here in the Tar Hill State.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): What better person to open this terrific symposium on new scholarship on the US. South. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Here is Dr. Rick Mizell to speak about reshaping the great migration and public health in the South.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Well, thank you so much for inviting me I wanna thank Elizabeth Ott. Matt Turry, and the planning symposium for this wonderful invitation. It’s a real pleasure to be here. I was thinking. Nadia Clifton (she/her): last week, when I was putting the final touches on this talk, one of my first
Nadia Clifton (she/her): presentations was actually here at Unc. I was actually part of the Spgr program. In the same cohort with one of your colleagues Cheryl Discombe Woods, and we were in the same Nadia Clifton (she/her): sort of cohort, and I’m sorry Cheryl Woods gets going Bay and
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I wrote a paper on maroon communities sort of a trend transnational approach between the great Dismal swamp maroons and maroons of Palmyra’s and Trilani town, and in Jamaica.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and cover. The cover was probably 35 pages, but in my mind, at the time it was 300 pages. It was the longest thing I’ve I’ve ever written at that particular time, and Professor William Darity was a part of this process, and
Nadia Clifton (she/her): we were all scared to death of of Dr. Doerty, and and in some way, shape or form. He He asked us all how we define the term political economy.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And all of these years later I’m still not sure I can define political economy. But but anyway, I’m I’m very happy to to be here and to talk to you a little bit about some of my ongoing research.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So I’m I’m a historian of medicine, race environment, technology. But a lot of my work deals with with movement. You know, with my first project. On the 1927 flu I dealt with
Nadia Clifton (she/her): creos of color. Moving from Louisiana, from the Louisiana hinterlands into into Houston. As as part of this migration trend but also my work on environmental disasters. I’m also an environmental historian, and I deal a lot with displacement. With ruthlessness. What Mindy? Fully love describes as root shock right? What happens when the spaces around you
Nadia Clifton (she/her): change and are disfigured. And how does that sort of have a physiological
Nadia Clifton (she/her): impact on on who you are as as a person. And so I’m always thinking about these questions of of movement. And so this this talk tonight will sort of highlight some of of those sort of lingering ideas, and and I must admit particularly, the the first part of
Nadia Clifton (she/her): of my talk is, is a little bit sort of new right. This is sort of part of a chapter that I’m that I’m working on. And I thought, what better place to sort of think, think about some of these questions of the great migration and public health.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Than this particular space. Sometimes that can be a little scary, but that’s a that’s a dice. I’m willing to to roll So
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I’m so thinking about some of these broader questions of of the great migration and health as one theme for this talk, but also a particular moment. Which I’ve sort of recently tied into the great migration, and that is the Seattle artificial kidney center, which I’ll talk about in a moment, and the third sort of piece which sort of runs throughout much of this conversation.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Is the concept of of the archive, and how we think about changes within the archive. And all of this comes out of my book in progress. Which is entitled Running Sugar, diabetes and politics of running sugar, running sugar, diabetes, and the politics of race and and difference.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so you know, recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the great migration and and sort of how we’ve come to sort of conceptualize this particular
Nadia Clifton (she/her): movement. And I must admit that you know much of this talk. Some of this talk is is very figure heavy, meaning that I’m talking about sort of physicians and sort of well-known figures, and that’s not usually how I sort of talk or how I write, but it’s just how this particular piece is is shaping up. At this at this moment.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But one of the historiographical shifts that I think is really needed within some of these conversations around the great migration
Nadia Clifton (she/her): are the ways in which people move for various reasons. In other words, people actually move for for education, right people moving to places like Chicago to attend medical school, or going to undergraduate in the sort of Northern city. We don’t necessarily think about that
Nadia Clifton (she/her): as part of the great migration. We sort of frame it within sort of sharecroppers, going and working in industries and some of these other ways. But we don’t necessarily talk about sort of the education that’s part of of the great migration. That’s a narrative we often hear with immigration, right with Eastern and Southern European immigrants coming into the country, but also Caribbean and African immigrants coming into the country, but not necessarily as part of of the great migration.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So I do think that there’s some reshaping that is, is, is important for us to think about with these conversations around the great migration. Nadia Clifton (she/her): So I’m going to start with a piece that was published several years ago. Now.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Which was very influential. In terms of how people had begun to think about some of these conversations around sort of the great migration and public health.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and the title of this, which was in an economic journal. The impact of the great migration on mortality of African Americans evidenced from the deep South Was interesting because they essentially make an argument that the great migration was awful Nadia Clifton (she/her): for the health of of black people.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And you know they sort of in in a roundabout way, sort of talk about these questions of housing and sort of discrimination and racism. But the key issue that they’re framing their argument around
Nadia Clifton (she/her): are the the bad habits of sort of the migrants going into these spaces. In other words, they
Nadia Clifton (she/her): drunk more sort of used, you know, sort of smoked more were sort of using cigarettes. So alcohol, alcoholism and smoking cigarettes were 2 of the reasons why they argued. The great migration was was, was unhealthy for for migrants.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and they use Medicare be records to to make this this argument. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Now.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): you know, great migration. Historians have have often talked about the dangers of urban spaces. Right? So the devices but they also talk about sort of poor housing and racism and sort of lack of economic opportunities. What’s been talked about? Less are sort of the chronic disease and and even sort of lack of food choices and availability of healthy foods in some of these urban spaces.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So so the argument that you know
Nadia Clifton (she/her): their health was was was was worse because of just, you know, sinful or or horrible eating habits, or or the ways in which they smoke and drank was, is very limited in how we should think about this this conversation of of the great migration.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Now for many of us in this room. You know, this sort of conversation is salient and in in many ways right? So they highlight in this particular sort of essay a certain few States right? They highlight South Carolina. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Georgia. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): which are part of what they argue with the deep South. Right? So North Carolina is not included, Florida’s not included, and Texas is not included. Nadia Clifton (she/her): So you know
Nadia Clifton (she/her): how we sort of define the deep South, or or or the deepest South is is is a question that’s that’s very important for for this particular group, when I used to teach at at Florida State, I would ask my students a question I would ask, well, is Florida the South?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And oh, if you could, if you could have been president for some of those conversations, all of the kids
Nadia Clifton (she/her): south of Orlando would say, Well, yes, absolutely no. I’m sorry. All of the kids south of of Orlando would say, no, this is not the South, right, you know. Look at our culture. Look at sort of immigration.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And the kids north of Orlando would say, well, you need to look outside. This is clearly the south right?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And I would intend for this conversation to go on for maybe 15 or 20 min, but sometimes it would last an entire period because of the back and forth. And so these questions of of what makes up the South are very, very important.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But there are other sort of issues that I that I think sort of historians and and scholars can can raise about these conversations around the great migration. Sort of this lingering thought that I have about some of these sort of methodologies is sort of the notoriously difficult task it can be to
Nadia Clifton (she/her): completely evaluate someone’s age who was born in sort of some of these Southern spaces in some of these Southern places. And so
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I think for many of us, we’re really beginning to to think about how we might sort of re-conceptualize some of these broader questions of of the great migration. But this essay was was very, very influential. Some of these sort of headlines coming from Nbc. News and Cbs. Cbs.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): The great migration was awful for black people’s health. Great migration shortened the lives of blacks who who fled the Jim Crow South?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): The other question is sort of chronic disease, right? You know. How do we think about this narrative of a chronic disease not just possibly related to to some sort of alcoholism of smoking, but but also cancer. Or in the case of the work that I do.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): diabetes. And so these are are important conversations for us to think, and to really sort of reshape some of these conversations. Nadia Clifton (she/her): So you know
Nadia Clifton (she/her): how we can rethink some of these ideas is to really broaden our understanding of of what makes up the great migration and part of the work that I do around black health and and chronic disease
Nadia Clifton (she/her): revolves around a number of different archives, but also figures. When you’re researching particularly black people in in the Jim Crow South, it can be notoriously difficult to to pull out sources. So I cast a wide net, and I think one of the sources or the body of sources that I think has been underutilized are Black Insurance Company records.
And William Nicholson, who was founder of the Golden State Life Insurance Company, records, actually migrated from Houston to
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Los Angeles, and when arriving in Los Angeles, found that the health of black people was difficult. They did not have burial insurance, they did not have health insurance, and so he set out to to found Golden State Insurance Company records with the with the impetus for for helping sick people in in need.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so Nadia Clifton (she/her): William Nickerson, but also Robert Pershing. Foster you might remember this figure from the work of the warmth of other sons by Nadia Clifton (she/her): Abraham, but you know
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Robert Pershing Foster was was an important figure because he he migrated from Monroe. I’m sorry, Isabelle Wilkerson. I’m sorry, Isabelle Wilkerson is the author of the Warmth of other sons.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But Robert Pershing Foster was a physician, who, of course, moved from Monroe, Illinois, Monroe, Louisiana, to Los Angeles, California. And what’s interesting about him is that he does not sort of follow the the normal trajectory of of sort of how we think about sort of the great migration right. He he drove to Los Angeles
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and Isabel Wilkerson sort of talks about how he goes to Mexico for a few days, and then sort of leaves Mexico, and then drives through border towns.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Having a difficult time finding a place to stay, and eventually makes his way to to Los Angeles, where he, you know, faces extreme prejudice from sort of white clients, but also black clients as well. And so he’s he’s an important figure for for how we might think about the great migration because of his his expertise, but also what he is sort of bringing to these particular spaces. Once he once he gets there.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): One of my colleagues and friends. At the University of Houston, Helen, O. Dickens writes, writes about the life and times of of Helen Dickens, Amina Shakir, and is writing a biography of Helen Dickens, and Dickens was originally from from Dayton, Ohio, but would move to Philadelphia, where she would become an obstetrician, a gynaecologist.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and would, you know, serve migrants from from South Carolina and North Carolina, and she was an advocate for for teen health, anti drug sort of abuse.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so she was an an important figure, as well in terms of sort of reshaping the great migration and sort of how we might think of importantly, how we might think of individuals migrating to certain spaces for certain kinds of care, migrating to sort of Philadelphia for kind of psychological care or migrating to to New York City for cancer treatment. Right? So these are these are some of the questions that that we’re sort of thinking about.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So Nadia Clifton (she/her): this is an introduction for for how? I’m sort of starting to to think about some of my my own work. and I use Jackie Robinson often as an entrance into some of these broader conversations around diabetes, because in many ways he
Nadia Clifton (she/her): encapsulates. You know much of what I’m doing with this project. Jackie Robinson, of course. Nadia Clifton (she/her): desegregated Major League baseball played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. and well known at the time, was the fact that he was suffering from diabetes. Later in his life.
In summer of 1,972, Jackie Robinson was attending a dinner for a friend in Miami. Well known at the time, was Jackie Robinson’s sort of penchant for signing these detailed autographs right? He would essentially write books and stories to people for for autographs.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): but at this time his his eyes were hurting so bad and he could not walk. He could not see that he was unable to sign autographs.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): A few months later he was back home in Stamford, Connecticut, and he was scheduled to attend a anti-drug seminar in Washington, DC. Well known at the time was Jackie and Rose and
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Ruth’s son’s addiction to drugs. He had recently sort of battled his addiction to drugs. It had lost his life in an automobile accident. But Jackie Robinson was very, very sort of upfront about his struggling with his diabetes, but also
Nadia Clifton (she/her): dealing with the death of his son, and so he was very much on a lecture circuit, going around to to different places, sort of lecturing, and so he was scheduled to attend an anti drug symposium in Washington, DC. But his doctor pleaded with him not to attend. He was at this point bleeding from the eyes.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): His pain and his legs were so bad that he was unable to to walk. Nadia Clifton (she/her): And you you’ve died in in in August of 1,972 from heart-related complications to diabetes.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Now this story of of Jackie Robinson as a black man suffering from diabetes was was very much different from sort of the evolution of how we think about diabetes. Now, just as as a way of context, I just want to give a brief sort of historical context of diabetes. Diabetes is.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): it’s an ancient disease. The first, the first known reference to to diabetes comes from an ancient Egyptian text known as the papers. The term diabetes comes from the the Latin word of of siphon, as if water and urine are sort of moving through your body like a funnel.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and for much of many of the centuries before the twentieth diabetes was known as as a disgusting and painful disease, where you would literally sort of devolve into a puddle of urine or a puddle of of water. Nadia Clifton (she/her): The secondary term Millidius comes from a
Nadia Clifton (she/her): really a physician in the seventeenth century, who, upon tasting the the urine of a person with diabetes, responded that it tasted wonderfully sweet, as if imbued with with honey.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I can see some of your faces, but you know, in in the centuries before the twentieth the tasting of bodily bodily products was one of the ways that physicians diagnosed disease. So that was not unusual. Nadia Clifton (she/her): for much of, you know.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): for for much of world history. Diabetes was largely considered to be a disease of the heart. Until sort of understandings of sort of endocrine and endocrinology began to emerge in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But at his core diabetes is a B cell pancreatic disorder. What we think of, as you know, juvenile diabetes is
Nadia Clifton (she/her): a moment in which insulin stops functioning in the body stops signaling to to the body, to to release sort of energy, and eventually, if it’s not corrected, the body becomes insulin, dependent. What we think of as type 2 or adult onset is when the insulin becomes resistant and sort of the body continues to to push insulin, but organs and cells within the body. Do not hear that signal.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): We also think now of what we might consider. You know, type 1.5 or mature onset diabetes, or the youth and latent autoimmune diabetes, or
Nadia Clifton (she/her): among adults, which is to say that there are individuals who are diagnosed with what we consider to be type 2 diabetes as children, and people diagnosed with
Nadia Clifton (she/her): sort of what we think of as type, one diabetes as as adults of people, age 40 and above so all of that, to say, you know how we think about sort of diabetes is is complicated, and it sort of speaks to some of these broader conversations of the politics of disease, awareness.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): disability, politics, but also the complications of of diabetes. And how do we think about a figure individual like Jackie Robinson, who was known for his sort of athleticism, suffering from the disability of this particular Nadia Clifton (she/her): disease. and so
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Importantly, then, why Jackie Robinson is important. And then how this sort of ties into some of the conversations around the great migration is that you know those of us who do the history of race and medicine sort of talk about how disease is used to create difference. Right? So disease is used as a way to sort of construct
Nadia Clifton (she/her): sort of what was considered to be biological difference, but then, sort of defined, as immutable as as sort of a proxy for this sort of race and racism that cannot be changed by social environments.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and so similar to other diseases. In the early twentieth century diabetes was considered to be largely a disease of whiteness. Right? So the argument was that African Americans did not suffer from diabetes and could not suffer from diabetes because they were biologically incapable of suffering from diabetes. Right? So you have this position from 1898, writing that diabetes is a rare disease in the colored race.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): It was often considered to be a crime height or a Jewish disease. William Osler, well known physician, wrote that Hebrews seem especially prone to diabetes. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Wh. Thomas defined Jews as a race with a greater propensity for diabetes.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and the Hebrews, no doubt, are more commonly affected with chronic chronic Glycosyria than natives of the nation among whom they dwell. Part of the argument Nadia Clifton (she/her): that they were making was that, you know.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Jews were in this sort of civilizing process coming to America, and the more Americanized, they would become the more prone that they would be to to diabetes. Right? So this was part of the argument that they were
Nadia Clifton (she/her): making. Now sorry I keep ripping down because cutting off some of it. But part of the argument that that I’m making is not that black people were suffering from diabetes in the early twentieth century, too, that that much is obvious, right? I can sort of pull out
Sort of tons of information about black people suffering from diabetes. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Part of my argument revolves around this sort of race, making project right? So why and for what purpose? Did we use? Or were people, scientists and physicians using diabetes to create this racialized difference.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so then this sort of, you know, revolves around ignorance making, or sort of what some scholars call agnatology.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Why, we don’t know what we don’t know right? And so scholars have sort of talked about some of this dealing with the lead industry or the tobacco industry. And so there was a frustration, a silencing of information around sort of diabetes in the early twentieth century. Some of what?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): How Avery Gordon talks about ghostly matters, right sort of the intimations importance that we see in the archive that we can then use to sort of make these arguments. 1920, S. Metropolitan Insurance Company wrote in an annual report that the rate of diabetes among blacks exceeded that of whites right. Some scholars at Tulane made a similar case in Jama.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I’m looking at cases in New Orleans. A Baltimore physician in 1 32 wrote wrote of citywide morbidity at the Johns Hopkins, diabetes Clinic. and I’m countering Oswald’s works. Some wrote that which had recently reinforced the common narrative of black abnormality and diabetes
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Aldo Leopold wrote that it is rather common to today to hear usually well informed physicians express this belief.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So part of my book, then sort of thinks about in much the same way as movement of the great migration. Right? How diabetes crosses the color line, how we sort of move from this moment of sort of racialized suppression and ignorance, making to this moment within the era of the civil rights, where there is more awareness and sort of expertise around some of these moments, and so diabetes. I always make the case, and in the introduction and some of the talks I give
Nadia Clifton (she/her): as a chronic disease diabetes, narrates the twentieth century. Right? It narrates progressive era. It narrates world war, I great depression, new deal world War Ii. Civil rights, black power like there’s no particular moment of the twentieth century that diabetes does not touch. And so it makes sense that diabetes would then follow the trajectory of of the great migration
Nadia Clifton (she/her): so importantly in this particular moment. And and this is sort of important for some of the work I do, as well as a scholar who works on sort of black people in medicine in the early twentieth century
Nadia Clifton (she/her): it can be very difficult to pull out some of these sources right? So this is one of the few case records of of a black person that I’ve sort of come across, and this is sort of reported in Nadia Clifton (she/her): the Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin. Talking about Henry
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Roy, described as colored, aged 50 years driver, or rather light colored negro. Nadia Clifton (she/her): much emaciated.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Now that’s important, because they had to explain away those moments in which diabetes comes into the record. So the rather light complexion is important, because essentially what they’re arguing is that the closer they are to whiteness, the more prone they will become to to diabetes.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So it requires a jump into logic, right as as Karen and Barbara Fields say, a half of it zone of the mind’s eye. Right? So these are some of the arguments that they’re sort of making the closer they are to whiteness. The more white blood. Supposedly they have in their bodies the more susceptible they would become to to
Nadia Clifton (she/her): to diabetes. And some of these cases these arguments were made among sort of Eastern and Southern European immigrants as as well.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so I bring a lot of information into. Into this narrative I again I cast a broad net and some of the most important sources I’ve used for this project include Black Insurance Company records.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): You know, one of the first books I read a long time ago, Walter Weir’s black business in the New South, and and of course, Brandon Winford, who’s another alum of of North Carolina Central. That’s right. His new book, newish book, John Herby, making an economic struggle for for civil rights.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But but Black Insurance Company records are very, very important.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): The Atlanta Life Insurance Company records I’ve delved into those records. And and what’s interesting is this is me talking a little bit about the archive. Right? It’s not that I’m gonna find. At least I haven’t yet just found a nice body of records on diabetes that I can pull. But sometimes when you’re doing this work, you have to look around the peripheral, you know. You sort of
Nadia Clifton (she/her): look over here, and they might be talking about chronic disease, and in the midst of sort of holding this letter that Martin Luther King signed that I in my left hand. This is an actual. This actually happened. I just couldn’t put
Nadia Clifton (she/her): the thing down because Martin Luther King actually wrote on this thing right? So in addition to holding this. I’m flipping, I’m flipping. And I see this document of of a person who migrated from Atlanta
Nadia Clifton (she/her): to New York City because he did not think he could get the care he needed in Atlanta for his diabetes.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so that’s part of the great migration, too. Right? So it’s not just about sort of movement to one place and and back. It’s about this short term movement right? And and to go back to
Nadia Clifton (she/her): The essay in which I started. You know scholars of the great migration have have begun to push back on these certain trajectories. Trajectories right of, you know Mississippi to Chicago
Nadia Clifton (she/her): sort of South Carolina to to New York City. But people like Bernadette Pruitt, right sort of writing of sort of migration from Louisiana to Houston, or sort of the Texas hinterlands to Houston, and and of course, even before that right Earl Lewis’s book on on Migration to Norfolk.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Right? So they they migrated from from Georgia and and North Carolina to to Norfolk for these industry jobs.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But they also migrated from 40 min away to to Norfolk to for these industry jobs. And so you know what you see with the Atlanta Life Insurance Company records is this, you know, short-term migration right? I don’t know whether this person stayed in New York City.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): or whether they returned. Nadia Clifton (she/her): but the fact that there was a conversation about them going to New York City for chronic disease care. I think, is is an important part of of what we’re sort of defining here with the great migration.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): in a grant that I wrote some years ago. You know, one of the critiques that I got sort of using these life insurance company records was that? Well, black insurance company records are probably biased.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And I said, Well, yeah, probably. But so a white insurance company records. Right? So you know, it’s it’s sort of how we sort of think about these questions. But black insurance company records were in many ways at the forefront of sort of defining diabetes, but thinking about diabetes, care. They were among the first to actually print that this was an issue within black communities. And so in this particular moment, Victory Life Insurance Company records
Nadia Clifton (she/her): recognition of their role in discovering diseases in their early stages and thereby aiding in arresting cures. James CW. Granadi, who was an alum of Howard University, immigrated from Granada, I think, was very influential in terms of sort of raising awareness of diabetes in Harlem. I’m in New York City.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Charge race mortality is misrepresented. United Mutual Mutual Benefit Company countered importantly. Nadia Clifton (she/her): White Insurance company claims that blacks suffered primarily from contagious diseases like tuberculosis and syphilis. but not diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so I charge all of you to to really doing this kind of work, to, to really not overlook black Life Insurance company records Nadia Clifton (she/her): which brings us then to Nadia Clifton (she/her): a more distinct conversation of the great migration.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so I’m also an an environmental historian. So I think about people, I think about places, I think about environmental sort of concepts. I’m I’m also a historian of race and and the environment. And so part of how I’m thinking about these conversations of the great migration revolves around this concept of of race and place.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Now, Nadia Clifton (she/her): as many of you know. planners often attempted to suppress migration out of Southern spaces for a number of reasons. Nadia Clifton (she/her): But physicians. We’re also a part of this sort of effort to suppress migration.
And they were a part of this this process by essentially arguing
Nadia Clifton (she/her): that black bodies were physiologically incompatible with Northern spaces and and Northern climates. So it was. It was not just that sort of the winners were cold, and had poor housing, and and those kinds of arguments which they also made. It was that black bodies could not survive in the North.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and that this was in many ways an an old argument, right that had sort of been sort of made since the moment of since slavery, and encapsulated in many ways in 1,896 by Samuel. I’m sorry. Frederick Hoffman’s race traits and tendencies of the American Negro, in which he highlighted this sort of then common argument. At the time that we were in this sort of biological warfare.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and sort of writing. Under this concept of the extinction thesis, it was not uncommon for physicians and scientists to argue that in this era of biological warfare that blacks would become extinct in 30 or 40 years, because they did not have the capacity for citizenship. Too many were migrating to the North, and they would die off in the coldness of the winners of New York, Chicago, Detroit.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I want you to notice the date, and well, it’s really hard for you to see it. But 96. This was the era of Bessie, and part of these arguments were then made for Quessee versus Ferguson, which was sort of the moment in which segregation Jim Crow was spread throughout the American States.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who was a zoologist at Uc. Berkeley, also highlighted this conversation of sort of extinction thesis, and was one of the individuals who articulated this idea.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and so many physicians and scientists. In addition to planners, sort of use this idea to try and frustrate knowledge and frustrate movement out of the South.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and so for many of you, you know, I sort of rely upon, you know, black newspapers to to sort of make some of my arguments.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): In addition to some of the archival research that I’m also pulling up. But some of these newspapers are really interesting and really important right? So this particular piece, which I’ve often thought about Nadia Clifton (she/her): Negro making good in the North by Eugene Kinkle.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Just read just a piece of it. Negro was in the larger cities today have a lower death rate
Nadia Clifton (she/her): than in Southern cities. In fact, they have a lower death rate in some Northern cities than whites in some Southern cities, quite contrary to the predictions of scientists during the close of the nineteenth century.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): that negroes cannot stand, and the the rigors of Northern winters and the stern, stern competition of Northern industrial life. Eugene Kinkle, of course, worked with the Urban League, and and this was in Nadia Clifton (she/her): the Pittsburgh Courier.
Another example. Poor food, bad housing, and rigors of Northern winners held responsible for for high death rate. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Talking about. Then Surgeon General Thomas Paran.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): He wrote, that in general the Negro has both a biological and an economic handicap in the struggle for existence. He has not built up immunity to respiratory diseases in the degree that the white man has. Nadia Clifton (she/her): and it’s probably it probably has not. In the case of syphilis.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): A New York Senator also chimed in, and is happy to go lucky this position may have something to to do with it. Right? So you you see these narratives right within some of these conversations of
Nadia Clifton (she/her): of the great migration, and it’s important not to underestimate right how you know how serious you know these ideas were, and and their attempts to to frustrate this movement and and knowledge.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and so part of what I do then, as a scholar is sort of think about the breadth of of some of these conversations, what people encountered
Nadia Clifton (she/her): when they got to these urban centers, and sort of how some of these conversations evolved. And so I think about individuals like Yuji, Daly, Ulysses, Grant Daly, who was
Nadia Clifton (she/her): from Donaldsonville, Louisiana, like so many others, migrated to Chicago and had a running column in the Chicago defender, where he talked about all things, diabetes right? He talked about foot management. He talked about staving off Nadia Clifton (she/her): hyperglycemia. He talked about food, he talked about sort of
Nadia Clifton (she/her): trying to avoid amputations, and this was a steady column that you would see in the Chicago defender throughout the 1940 S. And and the 1950 s. And so this is, this is gold for me, right? For some of the work that I’m doing right sort of how we think about these conversations, and and what they encountered when they moved into these spaces.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Leonidas Berry, who was actually from from Woodsdale, North Carolina, which is in Person County. Nadia Clifton (she/her): near Roxborough. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Moved to Chicago as well. Guys, MDMD. From from from Northwestern, and also periodically wrote about sort of chronic disease in this particular moment of peptic ulcer.
And chronic disease. Your health is as well. Nadia Clifton (she/her): In the 1970 S. He’s also known for this sort of program known as the Flying Medics, where he would fly medical supplies from Chicago to Cairo, Illinois, to a
Nadia Clifton (she/her): a low income community, and this was part of a long trajectory history as well of taking sort of needs to a particular community. I’m thinking, in particular about the Aka Mississippi Health project between 1935 and 41
Nadia Clifton (she/her): when they for 6 consecutive summers, would go to Mississippi and sort of hold these wellness clinics, dental clinics. Sort of giving out medicines and sort of Nadia Clifton (she/her): sort of trying to stave off infant mortality and inoculation against certain diseases. So
Nadia Clifton (she/her): pushing back against tuberculosis and and syphilis. And so this was in many ways a continuation of that work done by the Aka’s and and sort of other sororities and fraternities. In the 1940 s. And and 1950 S. Again, he is from North Carolina, the South, and migrating for education, and all of that, then, is part of how we might rethink this this concept of of the great migration.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Importantly, Nadia Clifton (she/her): again. Nadia Clifton (she/her): it’s always a push to to define. You know why something is happening in a particular space.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So this is one of the earliest sort of pieces that I found on the great migration, and I didn’t sort of include all of it. Nadia Clifton (she/her): But in this particular piece by Eugene Leopold diabetes in the negro race.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): He’s arguing that physicians in diabetes, and and and Johns Hopkins had a diabetes clinic Nadia Clifton (she/her): in the 1930 S. And the 1940 S. Which I’ve been unable to to track down the records. Medical records like that are notoriously difficult
Nadia Clifton (she/her): to find. I was looking at Cook County Hospital records once, years ago, and they were literally in an abandoned building on the side of the highway in Chicago. Right! And the cab driver dropped me off and said, Well, this is it. And I said, This can’t be it, but it it it was, and on the top floor were the Cook County Hospital records. But so this hospital records can can be difficult to to find. But that’s the work we do.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But in the 1,900 thirtys and 1,900 fortys, particularly in the 1,900 thirtys, diabetes, specialists, public health officials were noticing and uptake what they defined as an uptake of black people suffering from diabetes in the city.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and so their response to this. This realization was to blame migrants right? So essentially. What they argued was that, well. Nadia Clifton (she/her): it’s not the native born black Baltimoreians who are suffering from diabetes. It must be those newcomers coming from
Nadia Clifton (she/her): basically Mary, parts of Maryland, you know, on the other side of Washington, DC. Or Virginia, who are moving into Baltimore with their bad eating habits, with their bad genes, that are skewing the rates of of sort of diabetes within the city.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So you see this sort of insider, outsider sort of narrative of of the great migration. But also how you know these cities would blame migrants. And you you see this for other diseases as well. But normally you see this for for infectious diseases. Right? So this is in many ways one of the first times. You see this in terms of of a chronic disease. Sort of blaming the migrants who are coming into these particular spaces for for for their ill health.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so Nadia Clifton (she/her): you know, these these moments in which I sort of find these types of of documents are very important for the argument that I’m making around public health and and the great migration
Nadia Clifton (she/her): an important aspect of of this work that I do also revolves around complications of of diabetes, right. Nadia Clifton (she/her): amputations, kidney failure, retinopathy.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): part of what separates the work that I do from other scholars who’ve written about diabetes is my sort of dogged insistence on thinking about the complications of this particular disease.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): which have been very well known for much of of the twentieth century. So this particular piece, on January fourth, 1, 34 talked about. Of what shall diabetics die? And we’re talking about Nadia Clifton (she/her): really amputations, but also sort of kidney failure as well.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And the other complications that individuals with with diabetes are suffering from. And so this is another way for me to to think about the great migration, and and how I’ve come to sort of understand this
Nadia Clifton (she/her): particular moment. One of the articles that I’m currently working on, which is in the pipeline is a history of the Seattle Artificial kidney center.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): This image from from Life Magazine is one of the sort of early dialysis machines. The machine looks scary, but that is the the early dialysis machine Nadia Clifton (she/her): dialysis would become normalized or
Nadia Clifton (she/her): would become part of rarely of of sort, of treatment, of of chronic kidney disease, or what was then often known as Bryce Disease in the 1940 s. Right? And Peter bent Peter bent hospital in in Boston.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So chronic kidney failure was a significant complication to to diabetes, but also a disease on its own, that that many people in the United States suffer from
Nadia Clifton (she/her): but dialysis was an expensive proposition in in the 1940 s. Right, you know, and somewhere around one in 300 people, would access dialysis in any given moment. It cost about $20,000 per year for treatment, which, as you can imagine, was an an astronomical figure.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and so it was rare. It was clunky. It took up a lot of space. People didn’t really think it worked, and and so only a few hospitals throughout the country sort of utilized the the dialysis machine.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So I became interested in this narrative. A story around Seattle artificial kidney center in in Seattle, in 1,961 and 1 62 Nadia Clifton (she/her): Seattle artificial kidney center was the first outpatient dialysis clinic in the country.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): but they had a problem. Like many cities, you know, Seattle was a city of, you know, robust immigration of migration. Boeing was there which brought sort of migrants to to the city. Nadia Clifton (she/her): but there were too many people who needed dialysis and not enough dialysis machines.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so the Kings County Hospital made the controversial decision to institute what was essentially a a civilian lay committee to decide who would gain access to dialysis, and who would be left to die.
Now to say that this was controversial is, is putting it lightly right. This was a significant bioethics, you know. Question right? Most medical students trained in the 1970 s. As Raul knows where Nadia Clifton (she/her): we’re sort of, you know, taught this particular narrative. As a medical bioethics issue.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): it was at its core an issue of supply and demand medical capitalism. Nadia Clifton (she/her): But, as you can imagine, you know, there are problems with this right? And so there are tons written about the Seattle Artificial kidney center.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and there are tons written about this particular lay committee. But my focus is on sort of pushing the racialized, you know, conceptualizations of of this committee. Which were mostly white. All all white, mostly middle class. Nadia Clifton (she/her): You know. You know, professionals within the Seattle community.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so they then most of the people who were chosen for dialysis were, were white, were heteronormative. Nadia Clifton (she/her): and were sort of considered to be sort of a strong figure within the community.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so part of the argument that you you get from people who’ve written on this was that race was not an issue, because Seattle Nadia Clifton (she/her): had a small black population.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so that’s where the great migration comes in right and that’s where I sort of begin to to to push back on some of these conversations. Right?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Seattle, as as many of us know is, was was a city that was was complicated. It was never Chicago, but there was a a strong black population in in Seattle
Nadia Clifton (she/her): but the the conversation also also revolves around. What does it mean to be a a person who was
Nadia Clifton (she/her): a public service? Right? And and that’s what was often used in some of these conversations, right? And and none of these conversations were as poignant as one Ucla sort of article published in in 1,968 medical advance and legal, vague hemodialysis and kidney transplantation
Nadia Clifton (she/her): in which they argued well, would civil rights workers jailed in the South be considered someone who’s doing the public service. So many of the criteria that we use to to choose would would be sort of Nadia Clifton (she/her): these questions around. Well, are they church members?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Are they sort of gainfully employed? There were medical criteria. They had to be between the ages of 15 and 45 having children was a benefit. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Having more than one child was was a benefit. Being single was essentially a death sentence. So, being married.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): having multiple children who were young Nadia Clifton (she/her): and being white and being middle class Nadia Clifton (she/her): attending church. having your children part of the Boy and Girl Scouts. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Those were the criteria that would make it most
Nadia Clifton (she/her): advantageous to to receive a spot for the the dialysis center. Right? So you know these questions present, you know, you know. Nadia Clifton (she/her): very, very serious ethical issues.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Would, being civil rights workers jailed in the South, or part of the Anti-avivis Section League, with those sort of Nadia Clifton (she/her): participations result in in being
Nadia Clifton (she/her): sort of called into the dialysis clinic. And so this is you know, part of the archival work that I do right, and and many of you are are familiar with this work, Marissa Point as dispossessed lives.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Michelle, Ralph Troia, silencing the past. And so I think, about the face of of archives, suppression of experience, right accumulation of voices is the creation of archives. Nadia Clifton (she/her): and the continuation of marginalized and and oppression in historical narratives, and this is part of where.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): you know this, this work around sort of silences and intimations. Importance right it. It would be illogical to think that there were not black people in Seattle who were suffering from dialysis.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But but why don’t we know this? And why are we not sort of writing about it. And why is this not part of sort of the ethical ramifications of sort of how we’re thinking about this particular moment.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Like many of you, my introduction to Black to Black Seattle comes through Quintar Taylor. Much of what I know about Black Seattle comes through. The work of Quintar Taylor, who who wrote that
Nadia Clifton (she/her): for many people Chicago was not the final destination. New York was not the final destination, that Seattle was Nadia Clifton (she/her): the far North, the last best place to to try and achieve this. This freedom.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and Seattle was again no Chicago, but there was a growing, robust black population in Seattle, and by the 1950 S. And 1960 s. Including a chapter of the and N. Double Acp. In 13 Urban League in 1930,
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Civic Unity Committee in 1, 44 in one of the first Black Panther party’s chapters outside of California, in in 68, and so, like many of these sort of migrants and other places. They were coming for for industry jobs, but experienced extreme segregation in in, in Seattle, right?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): In terms of hospital care, in terms of sort of residential segregation. Seattle was in many ways a hyper, segregated environment. Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so some of this research I used to sort of highlight these moments right, and there were several hospitals in in Seattle
Nadia Clifton (she/her): which either refused admittance to those who were black and ill, or did so on a segregated basis, or did so only if there were space available.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But this example here was sort of fairly common, as sort of the head of the Civil Unity Committee, writing to Virginia Mason Hospital in 1 46. Nadia Clifton (she/her): In regards to our policy we do not accept negroes, Japanese, etc. So
Nadia Clifton (she/her): you know one of the things I’m sort of thinking about, and sort of some of the pushback I received for this work as well, and I often get this with this kind of work that I do. Nadia Clifton (she/her): which is to say that you know
Nadia Clifton (she/her): we think you’re right, but we don’t think you can prove it right, which is sort of the the onus that you know. Sort of scholars who do this kind of work often have to have to deal with.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): which means that we have to look in in unexpected spaces. We have to look in sort of archives that others do not necessarily think about. Nadia Clifton (she/her): But sometimes the records are right there. But people have chosen not to look at those particular records.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And actually, this is an example of the latter, right? So when I was researching this particular Nadia Clifton (she/her): sort of part of this article. Nadia Clifton (she/her): and building Scribner Scribner papers at the University of Washington Special Collections.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): There was a box. It looked very dusty, like no one had looked at it in years that said Kings County death records. Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so I asked the the archivist if I could look at them, and you know it’s
Nadia Clifton (she/her): death records which are kind of, you know, fall under patient records. So I had to go through, you know Irb and I had to, you know, get special permission, write a letter all those kinds of things. But they gave me permission to to look at this body of records.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and it changed. How I thought about this this project, and it sort of spoke in many ways to this sort of broader conversation of the great migration. The great migration was kind of percolating, and in the back, you know my mind as I was sort of sort of thinking about these ethical issues around the Seattle artificial kidney center.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But Nadia Clifton (she/her): these, these death records, I think, really sort of highlighted many of these issues. And so Nadia Clifton (she/her): This final portion of this talk revolves around that, and you know just another. So final example of someone who migrated
Nadia Clifton (she/her): lloyd Elam, who was from Little Rock, Arkansas, was the first black person to receive an MD. From the University of Washington. He will go on to head the Psychiatry department and actually develop the Psychiatry department at Mahari Medical College and serve as its president from 1,968
Nadia Clifton (she/her): to another sort of important example of sort of migration politics.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But these King County death records are are important, right? And so, remembering that we had to be between 15 and 45. They thought that people who were under 15 were not mature enough to deal with the rigors of dialysis.
Those over 45, they thought, were too old, probably have underlying conditions. And, in fact, you could not have diabetes cancer. You could not have heart disease. You could only have chronic kidney disease to be eligible for for dialysis. And so
Nadia Clifton (she/her): these sort of death records and are very interesting and important for for how I’m thinking about these concepts right?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And I’ve scratched out the names because these are sort of records. And it’s sort of prudent, as you know, historians of medicine to to not identify individuals on these death records. And so in my work, I sort of changed their names to pseudonyms 100
Nadia Clifton (she/her): but this particular person who would not have have been eligible for Nadia Clifton (she/her): dialysis under the the guidelines born in Jacksonville, Texas, migrating to Seattle, for for reasons that you know, we could probably never know. Nadia Clifton (she/her): died without medical assistance. At the age of of 55.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Another person, born in Shreveport, Shreveport, Louisiana, also outside of the age parameters at age 61. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Many of these individuals died between, you know, one month after being diagnosed to living with 30, 40, 50 years. With this chronic disease.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): also in Seattle, city of residence. Seattle died at the University of Hospital in Seattle. Nadia Clifton (she/her): another person, a woman died in New Orleans, or place of birth in New Orleans, Louisiana, age 56, migrated to to Seattle.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): importantly, these records sort of show. You know. Not just that there were sort of, you know, this robust migration into Seattle.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But also the difficulty would have been to to be recommended for for dialysis to be recommended from dialysis, you had to be recommended by a physician. In other words, you had to get a referral from your physician to the Dialysis Committee to even be evaluated for this life-saving technology
Nadia Clifton (she/her): in a segregated space like Seattle, that was increasingly difficult. Nadia Clifton (she/her): This person was born in Mississippi, age 80. Immediate cause of death. Euremia Nadia Clifton (she/her): Died in Maynard Hospital, in Seattle. Nadia Clifton (she/her): and another person born in Little Rock, Arkansas.
This person, as you can imagine, was interesting because born in Raleigh Nadia Clifton (she/her): and and migrated to Seattle. It was a long way from home. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Died at the age of 78 and Nadia Clifton (she/her): just one month after being diagnosed. But
Nadia Clifton (she/her): these individuals would have been eligible for for dialysis. Sort of again, birthplace in in Texas. Nadia Clifton (she/her): age 42, which is under the cutoff died of Euremia at Providence Hospital. place of birth, Arkansas, age 38.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so these records I use to to make the argument of the importance or the salience of of sort of racial discrimination in places like Seattle, in particular, with the Seattle artificial kidney center, but also the importance of of the great migration.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Again, Texas, as place of birth, died at the age of of 37, Nadia Clifton (she/her): and so and and finally Nadia Clifton (she/her): another person born in Texas at the age of dying at the age of 44.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): You know, these these questions, I think, are critical. For for how we think about ideas I can see out of artificial kidneys that are because without sort of an understanding of the great migration
Nadia Clifton (she/her): we cannot conceptualize sort of how these particular moments are are racialized in this particular space. Nadia Clifton (she/her): They were going, moving to Seattle and in in droves, in the 1,900 fiftys and 1,900 fortys for Boeing industry jobs. Boeing was segregated until you know.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): around 1,000 951,951 but you know, thinking about the work of Quintire Taylor and thinking about these primary source documents sort of allows me to sort of make this sort of broader argument of how we need to to rethink these conceptualizations.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Of the Seattle artificial kidney center is not dealing with race because of a sort of a low black population in Seattle. And so the great migration sort of changes things right it it allows me to to make this argument in in ways that other scholars have have not. And
Nadia Clifton (she/her): You know, I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes from from Octavia Butler, which is that of.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): There’s nothing new under the sun. But there are other suns. Right? So great migration is is a moment in which we’ve not written everything that we need to to write about it. There. There are new trajectories that need to be discovered.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I don’t think I have the bandwidth to write it, but I think there’s a wonderful sort of book on the great migration from
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Louisiana and and Alabama to Las Vegas. I even have a title for it. Gambling, gambling for freedom. If if you if you write it, just just credit me. Nadia Clifton (she/her): yeah, because actually, you know, down the strip sort of down by where the star dust used to be.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and I don’t know what what direction. But to the left of the strip was an old community that that used to be sort of filled with residents from Alabama, who who migrated to to Las Vegas in search of of industry, gambling jobs, many of them locked out of some of the higher paid
Nadia Clifton (she/her): dealer and sort of positions in in in Las Vegas and relegated to to menial positions. As they were in many other cities. But how we think about the great migration changes, these broader conversations of environmentalism changes these broader conversations of politics and changes. How we think about black history as well. Thank you.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): There you go, Rick. Thank you so much, Rick Mizl, that was amazing. Also, may I just Nadia Clifton (she/her): point out that Nadia Clifton (she/her): that whole talk was done without a single note? You may have noticed that I noticed that cause I was on the first one.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Amazing. Thank you so much for this. The floor is open. We have time for questions from all of y’all. You’re welcome to that. Our colleague, Matt Thury, is in the back with Nadia Clifton (she/her): a microphone as well. And I’ll be glad.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Mc. For a little bit longer. And, Rick, you know for a moment as long as you have us. Thank you. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Yes, please. Thank you.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Wait. Maybe use the phone because we’re we’re doing our recording. Oh, of course, thank you. And I was just wondering, could you tell Nadia Clifton (she/her): some of the efficacy of these treatments, especially of sort of African American doctors and communities? And was it sort of
Nadia Clifton (she/her): on par with the efficacy of treatments by sort of white doctors for white communities? Nadia Clifton (she/her): Or what did that sort of look like in the sort of you know the back end of of treatment. Nadia Clifton (she/her): So the efficacy of the dialysis treatments
Nadia Clifton (she/her): of of any of these sort of medical interventions that they were advocating, or in the column, the Chicago newspaper column, any of those sorts of Nadia Clifton (she/her): yeah. Well, I think that they were.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I think, responding to to the needs of of the migrants, and sort of, as part of you know, Urban League chapters within some of these cities.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But they were also I don’t know if this is working. They were. They were also very much sort of pushing for for medical treatment right through traveling clinics.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): I think that what you there’s there’s certain things that you always see within some of these conversations right pneumonia sort of influenza instead of dealing with those issues. But but I also think what’s important is sort of the conversations around dealing with with cancer
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and and and getting treatment for cancer, and sort of moving into certain spaces like Providence Hospital in Chicago. And so this was particularly in the 20 s. And 30 s. This was the progressive era, right? So they were sort of really pushing for sort of the health
Nadia Clifton (she/her): of migrants as a way of of protecting themselves, but also protecting the health of in some ways middle class blacks, but but also the the entire community.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so the the treatment was was was there? But it was still difficult to access, you know, based on, you know, lack of insurance, but also lack of money to to deal with sort of the diseases that were impacting people.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But I think these physicians and also nurses right? Part of what I argue in my work is that we? We have to decenter physician voices which I say that but everything I talked about here we’re physicians, but so but but for much of the twentieth century black people were much more likely to encounter a nurse than they were a a physician.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and so part of that revolves around sort of diets and and dieticians, and I was having a conversation with someone who was, I think, she was an archivist who was sort of doing work on
Nadia Clifton (she/her): pulling up archives at Hbcus. And sort of one of my sort of thoughts was that, you know North Carolina Central had had a department of human ecology. Was it human ecology or
Nadia Clifton (she/her): might not have been human ecology. But but some of these sort of departments which Home economics right? Which sort of revolved around diet. I think some of those sort of records and archives would be if they’re able to be pulled up.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): would be so invaluable to some of the work we were doing, because all of that revolves around sort of efficacy. It revolves, it revolves around treatment, it revolves around how to deal with sickness and illness in certain communities in certain spaces.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Thank you, and also sorry for the awkward passing you of the mic. I only did it because our colleague was gently nudging us to, you know. Take a seat. Nadia Clifton (she/her): yes, please. Just did that there Nadia Clifton (she/her): difficulties have encountered locate access
Pitches. some that were dusty and so deteriorating. Run into other Nadia Clifton (she/her): barriers. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Simple, lost?
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Yeah, I mean no more than most of the people in in this room. Right? But you know, medical records like Joshua and archives were, were notoriously difficult to to access. You know I had to get basically a letter of introduction. I was telling Raoul from from a colleague to to get access. But I think more importantly.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): it is Nadia Clifton (she/her): looking at those archives that are off the beaten path, and that other scholars don’t necessarily think about. Nadia Clifton (she/her): You know. I often wonder about this. This Kings County death records, because
Nadia Clifton (she/her): it was almost like somebody wanted me to find. You know it was. It was just so nicely put there right, and and nobody else has ever talked about it. I mean, I might be a conspiracy theorist, but if and most of them were of of sort of black people who had died in Seattle, not all of them, but it just sort of speaks to sort of the privatization of of archives and sort of how we go about doing this work.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But you know, it’s Nadia Clifton (she/her): I’ve been doing work on this on this project, for you know, really, 10 years now is to start. It’s time to to really wrap this this book up, and and just write it and and publish it.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But I think that sort of the the Nadia Clifton (she/her): Federal sources, you know, can be easier. But sort of these sort of local sources that you have to sort of pull out of different spaces.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Can be difficult. And I think for me the biggest difficulty I’ve had really, for this document, for this particular book is just a disorganization of sources right in some of these sort of places right
Nadia Clifton (she/her): where you’ll go and they’ll give you the key to a room, and it’ll be a room full of boxes that are not organized, and they’ll say, well, you know, have at it, and I’ll just say any meaning, my Nemo, and I’ll just start looking at stuff, and it’s really just the luck of the draw. But that’s that’s part of the game, unfortunately. Yeah.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): thank you. Oh, there’s one more, and I’m afraid that that will have to be our last question for the evening. Okay, I’ll try to make it a big one. So I was wondering if you know if dialysis becoming covered under Meta
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Medicaid. I believe, in the late 60 s. If that improved access to dialysis for black patients in Seattle or anywhere else.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Well, it’s funny you asked, that. So this this article that I’m working on, or that’s sort of in the pipeline, is really one of 2 pieces that I’m working on. So this is, I have this Seattle artificial kidney center which roughly goes into the 19. It goes into the 1980 s. Because even into the 1980 s. There were rumors that this.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): you know, lay committee was still choosing or deciding who was get access, who who would have access to dialysis? So there was this fear, even among residents in Seattle, in the 19 seventies and eighties, that their fate would come down to this sort of anonymous committee, who would choose whether they would live or or would die.
But the second half of this, which I’m working on for a edited collection, you know, goes from 1,972, you know, medicare dialysis Entitlement Act, which you’re referring to. Nadia Clifton (she/her): All the way through the current moment and and sort of evaluations of estimated gaming or filtration rate.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): evaluations, evaluations, which is the argument that black people are more muscular and therefore should be evaluated differently in terms of kidney disease, which is wrong, which is sort of rooted in sort of pseudoscience and scientific racism.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): But it’s still common. And so some hospitals are now starting to reevaluate the use of sort of racialized diagnostic tools? As part of black lives matter, and some of these other movements. But to more directly answer your question. It moved. Dallas’s entitlement made, you know Dallas is a disability.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and it made it accessible. But then geographic racism also plays a part as well. So part of you know. The argument that I make for this second essay is that dialysis is mostly dominated by for profit, dialysis, clinics for seasonal and and devita. Right? 80% of the dialysis clinics you’ll see out in in the Us. Are devita for seasonal Us. Renal care is a distant third.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and so particularly in the South. Again, this deepest South. What represents the South? You’ll see these conversations of people who might have to go 2 towns over or an hour for access to a dialysis clinic, a dialysis care.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so, while the Medicare Act made it technically more accessible. There’s still barriers. Nadia Clifton (she/her): And you know, these barriers include transplantation, because you have to go through a dialysis clinic to get to the dialysis to the transplant list for a kidney.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so if your if your experiences in in sort of davito for seasons, if you don’t have access to that, or you’re sort of discontinued from that care, then it’s essentially impossible for you to get a transplant. So it moved it from sort of inaccessible because of sort of a lack of medical resources to inaccessible, due to geographic racism.
In place. And so, you know, those are the moments in which, you know, we continue to think about sort of questions of place and race as well. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Think we? Okay, I’m gonna exercise Mc privilege to just do one more question.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Hello, thank you for sharing your research with us. I was wondering. I had 2 questions. So
Nadia Clifton (she/her): the most unfortunate Mc privile, it’s okay, you know. I was wondering when you talked about the Virginia Mason hospital records and thinking about their denying all sorts of minorities, or like racialized groups. Are you thinking comparatively around? Especially in the West, like tribal communities or indigenous communities? Experience medical racism in the same
Nadia Clifton (she/her): kind of like urban migration patterns from like reservations to the city, and, like all of that, overlap at the same time. And then I’m also wondering, are you finding any sources of like community organizing around treating chronic diseases like just more like folk medicine, or like thinking about like herbalism, and like just especially like black matriarchal, like medical care that’s coming out of
Nadia Clifton (she/her): like families in the South. Yes. Nadia Clifton (she/her): take your time. But so I know we’re we’re running out of time. Yeah. For for the Seattle artificial kidney center? No, those are those are great questions. Nadia Clifton (she/her): a. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Mostly dealing with with with with
Nadia Clifton (she/her): black people in in Seattle, but also with Asian communities, sort of a large Asian community. But one of the sort of the earliest sort of examples of sort of Dallas’s was a person in Seattle named Ernie Crow Feather, who was a member of indigenous group
Nadia Clifton (she/her): who was, who experienced quite a bit of discrimination and racism, and in terms of his quest for dialysis people thinking that he was not worthy of dialysis due to his not being white. And so you know Seattle is is a space in which you sort of think about sort of all of those sort of moments, and all of those questions for for my particular project. I’m mostly dealing with
Nadia Clifton (she/her): sort of migration of of black people from parts of the South.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): you know, there, there’s so much about the Seattle artificial kidneys, and I couldn’t get into for this talk. But they’re like eugenic, like, you know, sort of conversations around. Who is, you know, acceptable and eligible right, you know, if you you know, if you’re they looked at your parents. They looked at your siblings. If your parents were considered to be indigent, then that was a strike against you. You know, as as sort of one of the as the 2 authors from Ucla wrote being creative.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): Not being white was was, you know, was was put you at the bottom of of the of the of the heap, so to speak.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): As one of them wrote, you know, being Henry David Thoreau with bad kidneys was no place to be, you know, in in Seattle. You know, as far as sort of indigenous knowledge for for my book on diabetes. Nadia Clifton (she/her): you know, III think about these questions around
Nadia Clifton (she/her): you know, community groups, particularly in the 1,900 seventys and eightys really. And most recently, that’s what I’m thinking about in terms of conversations around type one right? And so this was not fully a talk on diabetes, but
Nadia Clifton (she/her): there was this sort of conversation around black people, particularly by the 1950 s. And sort of the evolution of autoimmune disease. I’m sorry, but I’m gonna wrap this up the evolution of autoimmune diseases in the 1950 s. There was this sort of argument that
Nadia Clifton (she/her): you know what? What was then considered to be thin diabetes was a white disease, and sort of obese diabetes was was a black disease, and so then, having a black disease, or what was considered to be a disease of obesity, was due to bad eating choices and and bad habits.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and so what that resulted in is that even today there’s sort of this misconception that black people don’t suffer from type. One diabetes.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): And so part of what I’m dealing with is sort of thinking about the mobilization around. Sort of black people with type one diabetes who are sort of sort of
Nadia Clifton (she/her): pushing for an existence within their own. You know, sort of communities of those individuals suffering from type, one diabetes but also sort of managing some of their their symptoms, which are often ignored. Right? So
Nadia Clifton (she/her): the American Diabetes Association. Actually sort of put together a a a platform for black people type one diabetes, and they receive quite a bit of pushback from sort of white individuals who are who are type, one suffering from type, one diabetes. And so that’s that’s one example of these sort of local organizations of black people suffering from type, one diabetes who are sort of
Nadia Clifton (she/her): mobilizing around their community to deal with their particular disease. And you see the same thing with sort of Asian communities. Right? There’s a misconception that Asians don’t suffer from diabetes sort of this perception because they’re small and thin.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): That they don’t suffer from diabetes, which, if you look, you’ll see quite a bit of mobilization community groups particularly in New York. And you’ll see this around the Juvenile Diabetes Association in 19, you know, 70 S. And 1980 s. Around certain communities in certain spaces that are mobilizing around that particular space.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): So? So to answer your question. Yes, but that conversation in my project is a little bit later, perhaps, than than other conversations and and other books.
Sort of really thinking about that for the last chapter, and even the the epilogue. But I do think that those are are important conversations to be had as well. Nadia Clifton (she/her): Thank you so much. Once again, great Nadia Clifton (she/her): reciting.
Nadia Clifton (she/her): and with that I hope you enjoy the this symposium tomorrow and have a great evening. Everybody.
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