Race and Health in Charleston, 1870-1940; Food for Thought Lecture

Join us for a compelling lecture by Dr. Jacob Steere-Williams, College of Charleston professor and internationally recognized historian of epidemic disease. This presentation examines the complex historical connections between race, public health, and medical policy in the United States, focusing on the transformative and turbulent period between 1870 and 1940.

During these decades—spanning Reconstruction, Jim Crow, industrialization, and waves of epidemic outbreaks—public health systems developed practices that disproportionately shaped the lives of African American, immigrant, and marginalized communities. Dr. Steere-Williams explores how medical theories, sanitation campaigns, segregated hospitals, and public health legislation both reflected and reinforced racial hierarchies in the post-Civil War through pre-World War II era.

Attendees will gain insight into the deep historical roots of modern health disparities, as well as the ways that scientific authority, social policy, and racial ideology intersected in the American South and across the nation. This lecture offers an essential perspective for understanding current public health conversations…