Idylls of the piney woods: health and race in southeastern Louisiana, 1878–1956

Abstract

Scholars have investigated the important connections between racial identity, geography, and environment. Frequently these studies have focused on the location of noxious industries, questions of environmental justice, or segregation of racialized groups in areas of deleterious environmental conditions. In this paper, I argue that beneficial environmental conditions can also be closely tied with racial identity and that racial identity in turn can influence perceptions of the environment. These connections are evident in southern Louisiana—specifically St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana—in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. St. Tammany Parish, located in the piney woods of southeastern Louisiana, served as a health resort for New Orleanians seeking refuge from yellow fever and for other Americans attempting to restore their health. Residents and medical specialists understood the healthful qualities of the parish to emanate from the fragrance of the pine trees and the restorative waters. St. Tammany Parish's reputation for health, however, only applied to people with a white racial identity, despite the fact that St. Tammany Parish had a significant black population. White residents within the parish reserved tuberculosis sanitaria, health clinics, and access to natural springs for white patrons only, even amid fears concerning illness among black residents. Additionally, late nineteenth and early twentieth century medical specialists pointed to morality, criminality, and racial characteristics in their determination of the causes of illness.

Keywords:

• race
• health
• environment
• US South

Notes

1. French and Spanish legal systems allowed and regulated “interracial” sexual relationships in part through identifying people of mixed ancestry as a “middle-tier” race—the gens de couleur libre (free people of color) who had specific rights. Children of interracial unions were also considered “natural” as opposed to “illegitimate” and could inherit wealth and property from their white fathers (Sterkx 1972).

2. Census marshals clearly applied the classification “mulatto” inconsistently; furthermore, of the census years used in this study, only 1880 and 1920 used mulatto as a separate racial category.

3. White New Orleanians were so convinced of Sicilians’ “natural” inferiority and criminality that a mob of hundreds of white men lynched eleven Sicilian men in 1891 who were acquitted of murdering the chief of police.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amy R. Sumpter

Amy R. Sumpter, Ph.D., is a Limited-Term Instructor of Geography at Georgia College and State University, GA, USA