page_title: History of Memphis, Tennessee
section_title: Yellow fever epidemics - 1870s
hierarchical_section_title: History of Memphis, Tennessee / 19th century / Yellow fever epidemics - 1870s
caption_attribution_description: English: A Mississippi River landing, Memphis, Tenn.
context_page_description: The history of Memphis, Tennessee and its area began many thousands of years ago with succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples. In the first millennium, it was settled by the Mississippian Culture. The Chickasaw Indian tribe emerged about the 17th century, or migrated into the area. The earliest European exploration may have encountered remnants of the Mississippian culture by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. Later French explorers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle likely encountered the Chickasaw.
  The European-American city of Memphis was not founded until 1819. The city was named after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River in North Africa. It rapidly developed as a major trading center for cotton cultivated at the region's large plantations and dependent on the work of enslaved African Americans. In the 19th century, and especially 1878 and 1879, the city suffered severe yellow fever epidemics. In 1878 tens of thousands of residents fled and more than 5,000 died, with hundreds more dying in the next year's epidemic, causing the city to go bankrupt and give up its charter until 1893.
context_section_description: Extensive yellow fever epidemics in the 1870s (1873, 1878 and 1879) devastated the city. In 1873 some 2,000 people died, the highest fatalities of any inland city. Because of the severity of the 1873 epidemic, when yellow fever was diagnosed on August 5, 1878, more than 25,000 people left the city within two weeks. Many moved permanently to other cities such as St. Louis and Atlanta. It was reported that such terror gripped the town in August 1878 that fleeing families "left their houses with the doors wide open and silver standing on the sideboards." The population had been roughly 50,000 before the start of the epidemic. Of the 19,000 who stayed in Memphis, 17,000 came down with yellow fever, and 5,150 died.
  At that time it was not known that this fatal disease was carried by mosquitoes, so public health measures were unsuccessful. Remaining in the city to care for the sick, a number of Catholic Franciscan Sisters of Mary, Episcopalian nuns of the Sisterhood of St. Mary and clergymen sacrificed themselves. An epidemic also broke out in 1879, in which several hundred people died. So many people died or fled the epidemics that in 1879 Memphis lost its city charter and went bankrupt. Until 1893 Memphis was governed by the state as a Taxing District.
  Robert R. Church, Sr., a freedman who became known later as the South's first African-American millionaire (although his total wealth is believed to reach "only" $700,000), was the first citizen to buy a $1,000 bond to pay off the debt and help restore the city's charter. He built much of his wealth by having bought real estate when the city became depopulated after the epidemics. He founded the city's first black-owned bank, Solvent Savings Bank, ensuring that the black community could get loans to establish businesses and buy houses. Because of the drop in city population, blacks gained other opportunities. They were hired to the police force as patrolmen and retained positions in it until 1895, when imposed segregation forced them out.
  Under a commission form of government, the city made improvements in sanitation, particularly the construction of an innovative sewer system designed by George E. Waring, Jr.. Construction of the sewers began in January 1880, and by 1893 had expanded to over 50 miles of sewers. This removed the breeding grounds of the mosquito vector. It is likely that survivors' acquired immunity from the 1870s epidemics contributed more to lesser fatalities from the disease in future years. In 1887, a source of abundant and pure artesian water was found beneath the city, which guaranteed its water supply and aided its recovery.
  In 1892 the first Mississippi River bridge at Memphis opened. As a result, the city began to prosper again, and it regained its charter and home rule in 1893. African Americans in the city were closed out of many opportunities by the segregated school system, in which their facilities were underfunded, and disenfranchisement by state laws passed in the late 1880s, which resulted in their exclusion from voting and other participation in the political system. State law and local custom imposed a system of Jim Crow based on white supremacy, and in the late 1890s the police force was closed against blacks.
  In 1897 as a conspicuous claim to its revival, Memphis had a pyramid-shaped pavilion prominently displayed at the Tennessee Centennial exposition.
caption: Mississippi riverboats (1906)
exif: {}