Yellow fever and black policemen in Memphis: a post-reconstruction anomaly.

IN AUGUST 1878 THE CITY OF MEMPHIS, CAUGHT IN ITS WORST-EVER epidemic of yellow fever, with thousands of citizens fleeing to the countryside and thousands of those remaining sick and dying, lowered the color barrier to allow black men to join the municipal police force. When the epidemic ended black police officers retained their posts, and the police department remained racially mixed until segregation was reimposed in 1895. The Memphis desegregation of 1878 ran counter to the general pattern of the post-Reconstruction urban South, for southern cities that had hired black policemen during Reconstruction began firing some or all of them with the restoration of conservative regimes. It was no coincidence that Memphis integrated its police force during a major yellow fever epidemic. Blacks had greater resistance to the disease than did whites, and in 1878 few healthy whites were left in the city during the epidemic. Thus, white leaders could quiet black complaints, mobilize black political support, and put more healthy policemen on patrol by hiring black officers. Never entirely candid about their motives, white leaders left no explicit records explaining their decision. Faced with a void in the official documents, the modern historian is obliged to explain the integration of the Memphis police force in 1878 with circumstantial evidence. A cause-effect linkage between a yellow fever epidemic and the integration of a southern urban police department should not be very surprising. After all, human health has a profound effect on human behavior and at times has imparted a decisive impetus to the course of history. Epidemic disease has had an especially dramatic impact.