TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 99
emergencyof1793.^51 Theirefforts,however,remainedforthemostpart
unappreciated. Instead, African Americans who collected the corpses
and buried them were accused of pilfering the dead, burglarizing their
homes, and in other ways enriching themselves. In addition to outright
racism,therewasakindof"medicalenvy"atworkherebecause,atleast
in the perception of Caucasian Philadelphians, African Americans
seemed less susceptible to the ravages of the fever. They saw their
fellow citizens not as selfless Samaritans so much than as shameless
scroungers.Intheseandotherways,the1793epidemic broughtto light
the existence of another disease ecology in the "city of brotherly love,"
namelythatofracism.
In our own time, these events continue to resonate strongly among
theAfricanAmericancommunity.Inhisshortstory"Fever"(1989)and
thenovelTheCattleKilling(1996),writer/activistJohnEdgarWideman
has repeatedly read the yellow fever disease as an early instance of the
disease of racism in the Americas. As he has the narrative voice ofThe
CattleKillingexplain: "First they blamed us.... We were proclaimed
carriersofthefeverandtreatedaspariahs,butwhenitbecameexpedient
to command our services to nurse the sick and bury the dead, the
previous allegations were no longer mentioned" (Wideman, Cattle
Killing140). This latter observation is not quite true to the facts.
Already at the time referred to here, African Americans had actively
intervened in the acrimonious public debate about their role during the
emergency. Two freedmen, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones,
publishedA Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, During
the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia 1793: And a Refutation of
Some Censures, Thrown Upon Them in Some Late Publications(1794).
Their text is a counter-historical narrative, the "late publications"
referringinter aliato a pamphlet by Matthew Carey, a Philadelphia
printer who soon after the epidemic had published hisShortAccountof
the Malignant Fever Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia(1793) in which
he excoriates African Americans for, among other things, "extorting
highwages,orevenstealingfromthosetheynursed"(qtd.inLapsansky
(^51) The question of a possible immunity of African Americans was discussed
during the epidemic but not conclusively settled. First generation slaves born in
Africawereprobablyimmune,theiroffspringwerenot.