DURING THOSE early coronavirus weeks this spring, many articles were written about the last time a similar pandemic swept over us with such force. With UNC preparing to reopen starting next week — as a surge barrels through the country and the state is reporting new highs in deaths and hospitalizations — it’s a good time to take another look at that history.
It’s become apparent during COVID-19 just how under-discussed the so-called “Spanish flu” (it did not start in Spain) was. Even Woodrow Wilson caught it, derailing him during Treaty of Versailles negotiations and perhaps contributing to Hitler’s rise.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 675,000 people died in the United States from that 1918-19 pandemic. (Adjusted for population, that’d be like COVID-19 killing more than 2 million.) Worldwide, perhaps as many as 1 of every 20 people died. They had masks and shutdowns too. They also made the same mistakes we’re repeating.
There was a naive moment this spring when I thought maybe we’d learn from that past. One piece of historical journalism in particular left an impression, a story by Mark Washburn in the Charlotte Observer that upended a narrative of Charlotte’s superior handling of that influenza.
For a century, the narrative of that era in Charlotte had been one of success, that the city had handled the pandemic comparatively well. Washburn told me that when he decided to write about it, a research librarian (isn’t it always a librarian?), Sheila Bumgarner, gave him a great tip. The Carolina Room at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library had a collection of those local death certificates.
Washburn got to them just before the library shut down. As he sifted through, the data they revealed didn’t match contemporaneous press reports and statements by public officials. It was all a lie. They’d wildly misled the public to pave the way for the city to reopen in time for a robust holiday shopping season. Charlotte’s quarantine ended, and the results were predictably lethal.
As I read Washburn’s story again months later, it was striking how predictive it was of what was to come in 2020: untrustworthy leaders, bars and churches complaining, a general cry for normalcy, shoulder-shrugging over mass death, prioritizing business over public health, and hasty reopenings.
Another article in the News & Observer about Raleigh said in one month alone, 1 of every 100 people there died. An ice cream truck collected the bodies. “Editorials in newspapers across the state pleaded for compliance, particularly an essay published in the 1918 Robesonian, entitled, ‘Why in the World Don’t People Listen to Reason?’” the story read.
STORIES WERE published about Chapel Hill too. What occurred at UNC was so remarkable that UNC’s internal news shop did one about the Spanish flu here, titled, “A viral legacy.” The Daily Tar Heel did too, with a headline that asked, “What can it teach us about pandemics?”
The eye-popping trivia was that two (2) UNC presidents were killed by the pandemic in three (3) months. That October, less than a week after getting sick, Edward Kidder Graham, age 42, died. The virus killed nearly 200,000 Americans that month. In January, the influenza struck the top man at the university again, sending Graham’s interim successor, Marvin Hendrix Stacy, to his grave at 41.
By school year’s end, well over half of UNC’s students had been treated at the infirmary. “The school didn’t close; military training had to continue, as did research,” read the UNC article. “But with more than 500 students treated for influenza over the course of the epidemic on campus, class attendance was sparse. Nearly 130 students were hospitalized at the pandemic’s peak, and three students died in a span of less than two weeks.”
Seven campus deaths occurred, including a nurse and a mother caring for her son. Thomas Wolfe was a student then and managing editor of the campus newspaper. He lost his brother to the pandemic. On the Thomas Wolfe Memorial now at UNC, a quotation about that brother from his Look Homeward, Angel is inscribed on the angel’s wing: “O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.”
[NOTE: I forgot to mention in the original version of this post that during the 1918-19 pandemic, E.A. Brown Furniture Company, which was next to where the Varsity is now, had coffins for sale piled up out front.]
Sarah Carrier, a North Carolina research and instructional librarian with UNC’s Special Collections, recently posted a thread on Twitter with more details of interest to the current moment. I recommend reading her entire thread, but here are a few key tweets.
Reports in the student newspaper indicate that life went on relatively normally, with classes, (non-varsity) football, fraternity parties (another current concern), and other gatherings, including for two big funerals.
SO WHAT does all that have to do with viewing history through a racial lens, as Stone Walls does?
We don’t currently have racial data, that I’m aware of, on the Spanish flu’s impact in Orange County. But as this Daily Tar Heel article highlighting the present concerns of Black student leaders states: “According to the CDC, racial or ethnic minority groups are at a higher risk of getting COVID-19 due to systemic health and social inequities.”
North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services’ COVID website shows that as of Wednesday, 21% of people in Orange County who’ve tested positive are Black; 40% are Hispanic. (The county’s total population is 11.6% Black, 8.4% Hispanic or Latinx.)
As for the Spanish flu, this scientific study shows that nationally cases were proportionately lower among Black people, perhaps because they had higher exposure to a lesser version of the virus the prior spring, but their case mortality rate was higher.
That tally of 7 campus deaths at UNC likely ignored any Black campus workers who might’ve contracted the virus and spread it to their families and neighborhoods.
A hundred years later, campus workers — as well as students, faculty, and community members — have been sounding the alarm all summer. Still, the university is determined to reopen with face-to-face instruction even though students living in dorms will have to wear masks when not behind a closed door in their assigned room, and can’t have visitors who aren’t building residents. Also, the DTH reported, “Carolina Housing is asking residents to pack light in case they are required to permanently relocate to another room or building on relatively short notice or return home during the semester.” Yet UNC’s dorm plan still falls into the CDC’s highest-risk category.
UNC housekeepers, who have already had coronavirus cases this summer, will be at heightened risks as they’re asked to repeatedly clean high-touch surfaces in residence halls and academic buildings. They’ve rallied and petitioned demanding safer working conditions. “This is life and death," housekeeper Tracy Harter said, according to ABC 11.
Not for nothing, the building that serves as a hub for UNC Facilities Services is named for two former housekeepers who were labor advocates and organizers. This year, before the outbreak, the university actually celebrated their fights against the institution for better treatment.
David Brannigan, a current groundskeeper, wrote an op-ed for the DTH titled, “UNC has poor record of protecting Black and minority workers.” He said he has “zero confidence in the University’s capability or willingness to do what is needed to keep workers safe from COVID-19” and that UNC’s actions “could have fatal consequences for certain groups of employees.”
People are worried not only for their own health, but that they could spread the virus to their families and vulnerable communities.
A petition by the Anti-Racist Graduate Worker Collective asking for all-remote instruction without interruption to worker pay and health benefits has gotten hundreds of signatures. Similar efforts have materialized across the UNC system. The group also published a letter calling on white tenured faculty members to strike. “It is wrong for the most protected workers to risk the least and the least protected workers to risk the most,” the letter read.
Two years ago, UNC’s top-ranked School of Global Public Health prominently marked the Spanish flu’s centennial. The School held a three-day symposium on the 1918 pandemic called “Going Viral.” Its magazine published an article, including this sub-headline: “It Could Happen Again.”
It’s unlikely the elites of the university will be the ones who pay the highest price for their COVID decisions as they did in 1918 and 1919. But when UNC’s public health school one day holds a symposium on the 2020 pandemic, what will its experts say about the choices university leaders make now?
What would it take to derail UNC from its present path? How many people will have to get sick? How many will have to die? Will the county health department have to intervene? The governor? A lawsuit? Indoor gatherings of more than 10 people are currently deemed unsafe and unlawful (with exceptions). The soonest that restriction could change is Aug. 7, three days before classrooms are to open.
PART II of Stone Walls’ last edition, “Police Problems,” is still in the works. Have any suggestions for historical or more contemporary examples of local police problems? Leave a comment or write me at stonewalls1793 at gmail.
SOURCES & CREDITS:
Woodrow Wilson, flu, and Versailles: newyorker.com
Spanish flu in Charlotte: charlotteobserver.com
Author email correspondence with Mark Washburn
Spanish flu in Raleigh: newsobserver.com
Spanish flu in Chapel Hill: thewell.unc.edu
Spanish flu in Chapel Hill: dailytarheel.com
CDC’s 1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline: cdc.gov
1918 and 1919 Tar Heel front pages via newspapers.com
Thomas Wolfe Memorial background: docsouth.unc.edu
A Backward Glance: Facts of Life in Chapel Hill by the Chapel Hill Bicentennial Committee
Twitter thread by Sarah Carrier: twitter.com
ESPN College Football Encyclopedia
2019 Carolina Football Media Guide
Greek life concerns: dailytarheel.com
Black student leaders speak out: dailytarheel.com
North Carolina COVID-19 data: covid19.ncdhhs.gov
Orange County population data: orangecountync.gov
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health article on Spanish flu: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Facilities workers express concern: dailytarheel.com
Carolina Housing guidelines for reopening: dailytarheel.com
UNC plan falls into CDC highest-risk category: wral.com
UNC housekeepers rally: abc11.com
Opening of UNC Facilities exhibit honoring Kennon Cheek, Rebecca Clark, and William Hubbard: facilities.unc.edu
Groundskeeper op-ed: dailytarheel.com
Anti-Racist Graduate Workers Collective petition: antiracistgradcollectiveunc.org
Call for white faculty strike: ncpolicywatch.org
Carolina Public Health Magazine article: sph.unc.edu
UNC School of Public Health “Going Viral” symposium: sph.unc.edu
Potential lawsuit by staff against UNC System: spectrumlocalnews.com
Photos of Thomas Wolfe Memorial and Kennon Cheek/Rebecca Clark Building: Mike Ogle
Banner photograph and design: Mike Ogle