Memphis, Tennessee

=== Yellow fever epidemics ===
{{main article|Lower Mississippi Valley yellow fever epidemic of 1878}}
In the 1870s, a series of [[yellow fever]] [[epidemic]]s devastated Memphis, with the disease carried by river passengers traveling by ships along the waterways. During the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878, more than 5,000 people were listed in the official register of deaths between July 26 and November 27. The vast majority died of yellow fever, making the epidemic in the city of 40,000 one of the most traumatic and severe in urban U.S. history. Within four days of the Memphis Board of Health's declaration of a yellow fever outbreak, 20,000 residents fled the city. The ensuing panic left the poverty-stricken, the working classes, and the African-American community at the most risk from the epidemic. Those who remained relied on volunteers from religious and physician organizations to tend to the sick. By the end of the year, more than 5,000 were confirmed dead in Memphis. The New Orleans health board listed "not less than 4,600" dead. The Mississippi Valley recorded 120,000 cases of yellow fever, with 20,000 deaths. The $15 million in losses caused by the epidemic bankrupted Memphis, and as a result, its charter was revoked by the state legislature.

[[File:AmCyc Memphis (Tennessee).jpg|thumb|Woodcut representing the waterfront of Memphis, {{Circa|1879}}]]
By 1870, Memphis's population of 40,000 was almost double that of Nashville and Atlanta, and it was the second-largest city in the South after New Orleans.<ref name="Crosby, Molly Caldwell 2006">Crosby, Molly Caldwell. ''The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History''. New York: [[Berkley Books]], 2006.</ref> Its population continued to grow after 1870, even when the [[Panic of 1873]] hit the US hard, particularly in the South. The Panic of 1873 resulted in expanding Memphis's underclasses amid the poverty and hardship it wrought, giving further credence to Memphis as a rough, shiftless city. Leading up to the outbreak in 1878, it had suffered two yellow fever epidemics, [[cholera]], and [[malaria]], giving it a reputation as sickly and filthy. It was unheard of for a city with a population as large as Memphis's not to have any waterworks; the city still relied for supplies entirely on collecting water from the river and rain cisterns, and had no way to remove sewage.<ref name="Crosby, Molly Caldwell 2006" /> The combination of a swelling population, especially of lower and working classes, and abysmal health and sanitary conditions made Memphis ripe for a serious epidemic.

Kate Bionda, an owner of an Italian "snack house", died of a fever on August 13, 1878.<ref name="Crosby, Molly Caldwell 2006" /> Hers was officially reported by the Board of Health, on August 14, as the first case of yellow fever in the city.<ref name="Crosby, Molly Caldwell 2006" /> A massive panic ensued. The same trains and steamboats that had brought thousands into Memphis, in five days carried away more than 25,000 refugees, more than half of the city's population.<ref name="Crosby, Molly Caldwell 2006" /> On August 23, the Board of Health finally declared a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, and the city collapsed, hemorrhaging its population. In July of that year, the city had a population of 47,000; by September, 19,000 remained, and 17,000 of them had yellow fever.<ref name="Crosby, Molly Caldwell 2006" /> The only people left in the city were the lower classes, such as German and Irish immigrant workers and African Americans. None had the means to flee the city, as did the middle and upper-class whites of Memphis, and thus they were subjected to a city of death.

Immediately following the Board of Health's declaration, a Citizen's Relief Committee was formed by Charles G. Fisher. It organized the city into refugee camps. The committee's main priority was to separate the poor from the city and isolate them in refugee camps.<ref name="Crosby, Molly Caldwell 2006" /> The Howard Association, formed specifically for yellow fever epidemics in New Orleans and Memphis, organized nurses and doctors in Memphis and throughout the country.<ref name="Hicks, Mildred 1964">Hicks, Mildred. ''Yellow Fever and the Board of Health.'' Memphis, Tennessee: Memphis and Shelby County Health Department, 1964.</ref> They stayed at the [[Peabody Hotel]], the only hotel to keep its doors open during the epidemic. From there they were assigned to their respective districts. Physicians of the epidemic reported seeing as many as 100 to 150 patients daily.<ref name="Crosby, Molly Caldwell 2006" />

The Episcopal Community of St. Mary at St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.communityofstmarysouth.org/about | title=ABOUT }}</ref> played an important role during the epidemic in caring for the lower classes. Already supporting a girls' school and church orphanage, the Sisters of St. Mary also sought to provide care for the Canfield Asylum, a home for black children. Each day, they alternated caring for the orphans at St. Mary's, delivering children to the Canfield Asylum, and taking soup and medicine on house calls to patients.<ref name="Crosby, Molly Caldwell 2006" /> Between September 9 and October 4, Sister Constance and three other nuns fell victim to the epidemic and died. They later became known as the Martyrs of Memphis.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.episcopalchurch.org |title=Welcomes You |publisher=The Episcopal Church |access-date=July 13, 2017}}</ref>

At long last, on October 28, a killing frost struck. The city sent out word to Memphians scattered all over the country to come home. Though yellow fever cases were recorded in the pages of Elmwood Cemetery's burial record as late as February 29, 1874, the epidemic seemed quieted.<ref name="Crosby, Molly Caldwell 2006" /> The Board of Health declared the epidemic at an end after it had caused over 20,000 deaths and financial losses of nearly $200 million.<ref name="Ellis, John H 1992">Ellis, John H. ''Yellow Fever & Public Health in the New South''. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1992.</ref> On November 27, a general citizen's meeting was called at the Greenlaw Opera House to offer thanks to those who had stayed behind to serve, of whom many had died. Over the next year property tax revenues collapsed, and the city could not make payments on its municipal debts. As a result, Memphis temporarily lost its city charter and was reclassified by the state legislature as a Taxing District from 1878 to 1893.<ref name="Hicks, Mildred 1964" /> But a new era of sanitation was developed in the city, a new municipal government in 1879 helped form the first regional health organization, and during the 1880s Memphis led the nation in sanitary reform and improvements.<ref name="Ellis, John H 1992" />

Perhaps the most significant effect of yellow fever on Memphis was in demographic changes. Nearly all of Memphis's upper and middle classes vanished, depriving the city of its general leadership and class structure that dictated everyday life, similar to that in other large Southern cities, such as [[New Orleans]], [[Charleston, South Carolina]], and [[Atlanta, Georgia]]. In Memphis, the poorer whites and blacks fundamentally made up the city and played the greatest role in rebuilding it. The epidemic had resulted in Memphis being a less cosmopolitan place, with an economy that served the cotton trade and a population drawn increasingly from poor white and black Southerners.<ref>Keith, Jeanette. ''Fever Season: The Story of a Terrifying Epidemic and the People Who Saved a City''. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012.</ref>