A Comparison of Ethnicity and Tuberculosis in the Historic Southeast

Abstract

The prevalence and occurrence of tuberculosis can be attributed to a number of intrinsic factors, including sex, age, and ethnicity, as well as extrinsic factors, such as socioeconomic standing, occupation, and nutrition. Evidence of a severe infection, recovered during the 2007 salvage excavation of Foster Cemetery in Lawrence County, Alabama, is presented. Recorded within an African American cemetery population, the tuberculosis case is placed into an historical and regional context through comparison with other 19th- and 20th-century African American and European American cemetery populations in the southeastern United States. Extrapulmonary skeletal tuberculosis frequencies within comparative populations are examined, and the relationship between ethnicity and tuberculosis is assessed. It can be determined that not only does this relationship exist, but it is also one of statistical significance, suggesting that, historically, African American populations had a higher occurrence of tuberculosis than European American populations.