The Problem South: Region, Empire, and the New Liberal State, 1880?1930

2. The Menace of the Diseased South

58 I chapter two The Menace of the Diseased South It is high time, anyhow, for the South to get over this morbid and babyish sensitiveness about the publication of every statistical fact that doesn’t please our passing fancy. The true Southerner, the man we ought to honor and follow, is the man who looks an unpleasant fact squarely in the face and sets about getting a remedy. . . . Let us rather follow the doctor and the leader who loves the South with all his heart, but who loves her too well not to use the knife of criticism and reform upon the cancers upon her economic life and general well-being. —clarence h. poe If society, like a machine, were no stronger than its weakest part, I should despair of both sections. But, knowing that society, sentient and responsible in every fibre, can mend and repair until the whole has the strength of the best, I despair of neither. —henry grady n May 1914 in Memphis, Tennessee, the Southern Sociological Congress gathered to address the social and economic problems of the South. James McCulloch, a clergyman and social reformer from Alabama, noted in the introductory remarks of the published conference proceedings that the state of affairs in the region was precarious at best, coming on the heels of Reconstruction, and that despite the “chivalrous spirit” at work for a “nobler civilization” in the New South, much still needed to be accomplished. “Readjustment has been so rapid that the march of progress is irregular,” he continued. “The new civilization is lacking in symmetry. Many zones of danger The Menace of the Diseased South • 59 and infection exist . . . the world has disturbed the South by talking overmuch about its danger zones.” The development of a diseased South in the post-Reconstruction period, McCulloch concluded, had inspired “the best intelligence and leadership” in the region to meet annually to resolve an array of problems that were distinctive to the South. On the one hand, McCulloch and his colleagues were sensitive to outsiders’ criticism of the region and were hesitant to address publicly the full extent of the ills plaguing the postwar South. Many of them often preached an optimistic New South gospel of progress in public and were more critical behind closed doors. On the other hand, they acknowledged that the South had serious problems that needed to be resolved, especially if the civilization of the New South were to ever match the former greatness of the civilization of the Old South. Therefore, the urgency of the task required a certain level of open discussion about the region’s problems, particularly since this was a “crusade of national health and righteousness.”1 In short, regional health and fortitude were essential to the progress of national civilization. An infected region not only impeded the healthy development of the New South but also retarded the economic and social progress of the national body. Medical historian Charles E. Rosenberg has theorized that disease does not exist until we have collectively decided that it does, “by perceiving, naming, and responding to it.” It is both a material reality and a “repertoire of verbal constructs” used to explain or justify medical authority and comment on social life.2 This proposition is hardly a new theoretical idea in southern history. In fact, one scholar in the field has suggested that the choice lies “between seeing the South itself as an idea, used to organize and comprehend disparate facts of social reality, or viewing the South as a solid and integrated social reality about which there have been disparate ideas.”3 Disease in the South was both a material reality and an analytical tool; or, as Rosenberg would say, it could both frame and be framed. Progressive reformers, such as McCulloch and his colleagues, supported public health efforts to eradicate real diseases in the South. These reformers also used disease as a metaphor and frame to understand social conditions in the South and the economic relationship of the region to the rest of the nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this period new scientific understandings of disease not only defined what was peculiarly southern but also explained how illness affected those who were not diseased. Reformers’ focus on healthy bodies as 60 • chapter two well as sick bodies drew increased attention to what was different or abnormal, thereby reinforcing regional distinctiveness. While some...