The Nashville globe. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1906-193?, 1908-02-28
COMMUNICATION.
Did Board of Health Forget?


Why did the Board of Health not
appoint Negro physicians to do the
vaccinating Of the Negro population?
There are at times, in certain cases.,
under given circumstances, an incon-
sistency in the white mans actions
that will not bear tolerable inspection
if the criterion by which they are to
be judged or measured is reasonable
fairness or justice.
The Board of Health is an impor-
tant department of the city govern
ment with a far-reaching mission
that of seeing that the sanitary condi-
tons Of the city are all they should be-.
This board is composed of men who
are supposed to be intelligent and well
versed in the duties of their depart
ment which relates to the public
health. In view of the fact that the
men who are doing the vaccinating
belong to a class of white men who,
like the Jews who had no dealings
with the Samaritans, have no dealings
with colored people, it is hard, eX-
tremely hard, to account for the action
of the Board of Health in appointing
all white men to handle the arms of
the coloTed portion of the population.
The non-appointment of a single col
Ored physician must have been one of
those oVersights which the Negro can
neither fathom nor understand. 1t
cannot be that the boards action in
the matter of appointing white men
solely to yaccinate colored people was
influenced by a monetary considera-
tion-the IL cents per vaccination,
which would net rapid manipulation
several dollars per day. Oh, no. this
could not have had any weight or bear
ing with the board in its onesided ap-
pointment Of all white and no colored
physicians. The utter exclusion of
the colored practitioners was an over
sight, only this and nothing more.
you take care of vaccination of
your people" If the board had made
such appointment under the same con-
ditions as it made it's white appoint.
ments, it would have done no more
than what it should have done-what
was reasonable and right 1t may be
stated that this city has within its
limits colored physicians who are as
profound in the knowledge of the Sc.
crets of the realm of Materia Medica
as any like class of professional men,
and just as able to perform any of the
difficult and delicate work of their
calling. The Board of Health simply
forgot that there were within their
jurisdiction competent colored physi-
clans who could and would have done
the vaccinating of their own people
and been more acceptable by reason Of
natural affinity, but the board forgot
and white physicians got the job and
the rake-off. The colored physicians
didn't even get Whit of the Odor
from the pie counter from whence
the temporary lucrative appointments
were dispensed or handed out. They
were left out in the cold, all because
the Board of Health had been a bit
oblivious.
But the fact that the board did not
appoint colored physicians to vaccin-
ate colored people emphasizes the fact,
whether Intentionally or unintention-
ally, that the ordinary methods of
jim-crowism practiced against them
did not hold in this matter of appoint
ment. The ordinary way of dealing
with the colored people by the white
man is to lump or tumble them all
into a heap without any distinction
and then cynically intimate by word
or sign, "There they are" Now in