“HOW WE ACCOMPLISH THIS WORK:” BLACK LABOR AND U.S. IMPERIAL PUBLIC HEALTH IN THE GREATER CARIBBEAN, 1898-1934

Abstract

How We Accomplish this Work: Black Labor and U.S. Imperial Public Health in the Greater Caribbean, 1898-1934” examines public health as a site of racialization in the transnational historical context of early twentieth century U.S. imperial expansion across the Greater Caribbean. Centering gendered Black labor, I foreground undertheorized disability histories of the Global South and underscore racialized disability as intertwined with the objectives of empire, the hierarchical structures of colonialism and the continued post-emancipation commodification of Black bodies. Post-war celebrations of the United States’ Caribbean empire often point to technological advancements in tropical medicine and sanitation that facilitated white occupation and the growth of tourist economies. I argue, however, that the technological advancements in tropical medicine, public health and sanitation and in infrastructure undergirding the region’s habitability for white U.S. Americans relied on forms of gendered Black labor. This multi-sited project turns to U.S. South (with particular attention to Louisiana), Panamá and Haiti and centers Black public health work, domestic labor, care work and deathcare and construction work, Black experiences of illness, injury and disability, Black intra-regional migration, and Black peoples encounters with state apparatuses, health regulations and medical experimentation. Putting archival public health materials and cultural products in conversation with women of color feminist theories, disability studies, critical race scholarship, and colonial health histories, I analyze how racialized disability is embedded in U.S. imperial public health and in the infrastructural works of territorial expansion.