2019 Joseph I Waring, Jr. Lecture Recap

The Waring hosted its annual Joseph I. Waring, Jr. Lecture last March. Although an evacuation due to Hurricane Michael derailed plans for the 2018 Sawyer lecture, Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble graciously agreed to be the featured lecturer at the Waring’s annual Spring meeting, instead. She presented her talk, “Forgotten in ‘America’s Forgotten Pandemic:’ African Americans and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.”

Dr. Gamble received her M.D. and Ph.D. in the history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania. She currently is a professor of medical humanities at George Washington University and professor of health policy and American studies at the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. A physician, scholar, and activist, Dr. Gamble is an internationally recognized scholar on the history of race and American medicine, racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, and bioethics. Her publications have included the following, The Black Community Hospital: Contemporary Dilemmas in Historical Perspective and Making a Place for Ourselves: The Black Hospital Movement, 1920-1945, published in 1989 and 1995, respectively.

In her lecture, Dr. Gamble examined how African American medical and public health services fared during the 1918 Influenza epidemic in the midst of demands on resources and racist scientific theories about the biological inferiority of black people. She also discussed the lower incidence of the influenza virus among the African American population during the 1918 outbreak.

Guests enjoyed a reception following the lecture in the courtyard of the Waring and the Macaulay Museum of Dental History. Click the thumbnails below to view the full-size images.