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This article was downloaded by: [Loughborough University]On: 09 October 2014, At: 04:05Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
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Idylls of the piney woods:health and race in southeasternLouisiana, 1878–1956Amy R. Sumpter aa Department of Geography , Georgia College andState University , GA, USAPublished online: 08 Jul 2010.
To cite this article: Amy R. Sumpter (2010) Idylls of the piney woods: health and race insoutheastern Louisiana, 1878–1956, Journal of Cultural Geography, 27:2, 177-202, DOI:10.1080/08873631.2010.494398
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Idylls of the piney woods: health and race in southeasternLouisiana, 1878�1956
Amy R. Sumpter*
Department of Geography, Georgia College and State University, GA, USA
Scholars have investigated the important connections between racial
identity, geography, and environment. Frequently these studies have
focused on the location of noxious industries, questions of environ-
mental justice, or segregation of racialized groups in areas of
deleterious environmental conditions. In this paper, I argue that
beneficial environmental conditions can also be closely tied with
racial identity and that racial identity in turn can influence percep-
tions of the environment. These connections are evident in southern
Louisiana—specifically St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana—in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. St. Tammany Parish, located
in the piney woods of southeastern Louisiana, served as a health
resort for New Orleanians seeking refuge from yellow fever and for
other Americans attempting to restore their health. Residents and
medical specialists understood the healthful qualities of the parish to
emanate from the fragrance of the pine trees and the restorative
waters. St. Tammany Parish’s reputation for health, however, only
applied to people with a white racial identity, despite the fact that St.
Tammany Parish had a significant black population. White residents
within the parish reserved tuberculosis sanitaria, health clinics, and
access to natural springs for white patrons only, even amid fears
concerning illness among black residents. Additionally, late nine-
teenth and early twentieth century medical specialists pointed to
morality, criminality, and racial characteristics in their determination
of the causes of illness.
Keywords: race; health; environment; US South
Introduction
In 1880, a resident of St. Tammany Parish in southeastern Louisiana
penned an ode to pine trees for the local newspaper, The St. Tammany
Farmer. She entitled her poem ‘‘A Reverie,’’ reflecting on the idyllic
landscapes of the parish. ‘‘Oh! Ye grave and stately pines . . . gone are the
heartaches, the crimes, the remorse, the unavailing tears of the later
times . . .’’ (St. Tammany Farmer 1880a, p. 5). The anonymous poet
*Amy R. Sumpter, Ph.D., is a Limited-Term Instructor of Geography at Georgia
College and State University, GA, USA. Email: [email protected]
Journal of Cultural Geography
Vol. 27, No. 2, June 2010, 177�202
ISSN 0887-3631 print/ISSN 1940-6320 online
# 2010 JCG Press, Oklahoma State University
DOI: 10.1080/08873631.2010.494398
http://www.informaworld.com
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contemplated the power of the pine trees to deliver a person in spirit to an
earlier, more carefree time, speculating that the environment could allow
one to escape from the complexities and sorrow of the current time. While
it is unlikely that life in the rural parish was ever without tears or
heartache, this poem illustrates the firm connection that many St.Tammany residents made between mental and physical healthfulness,
rural living, and the piney woods of southeastern Louisiana.
The connections that the poet lauded are intriguing. She attributed the
perceived absence of sadness, regret, and crime in St. Tammany Parish to
the presence of the pine trees. This connection also implies the inverse
statement, that sadness, regret, and crime occurred in places without the
pine trees. While this may be an oversimplification, the poet clearly
marks a distinction between happy rural places and socially tumultuousurban environments. This reflects the nineteenth and early twentieth
century belief that the physical environment—air, water, flora, soils, and
climate—affected not only the physical health of an individual but mental
and social health. The health of an individual affected the healthfulness of
the community or society and vice versa (Valencius 2002).
The local poet was not alone in drawing connections between the
environment and individual and social healthfulness amid the pine trees of
St. Tammany Parish. The southern part of the parish—the North Shore ofLake Pontchartrain—served as a health resort for wealthy white New
Orleanians from the early 1800s until the early twentieth century. Every
year during the summer months of the nineteenth century, thousands fled
New Orleans in an attempt to escape yellow fever outbreaks. Additionally,
patients suffering from tuberculosis from all over the country came to the
well-renowned treatment facilities, or sanitaria, located in the parish. The
reputation of St. Tammany Parish as a place to protect and restore health
originated with the perception of the healthfulness of the environment,particularly the healthful combination of pine trees, good drainage, and
medicinal spring waters. The residents, visitors, and patients in St.
Tammany also viewed the parish as socially healthful, particularly in
contrast with New Orleans, an urban area plagued with crime, disease,
and vice.
In this paper, I argue that these important concepts of physical and
social health as products of the environment in St. Tammany Parish were
closely tied with a white racial identity. Access to sanitaria, health resorts,and natural springs was reserved almost exclusively for whites. While St.
Tammany Parish had a significant population of African descent, it never
comprised more than 40 percent of the parish population between 1880
and 1960 (US Census Office 1880a, 1900; US Bureau of the Census 1920,
1943, 1961). Many whites within the parish viewed St. Tammany as a
healthful and wholesome place (for white people) not only because it was
rural, but also because of its low black-to-white ratio compared to other
Louisiana parishes. Public officials in St. Tammany frequently welcomed
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whites suffering from many different types of diseases because these
officials believed in the power of the environment to cure them; however,
municipal governments, fearing that their illness would destroy St.
Tammany’s healthful reputation and status, opposed the establishment
of treatment facilities or resorts for black people. In the late nineteenthand very early twentieth centuries, the connection between racial identity,
physical health, and social health seemed apparent to many whites in a
time period before the spread of disease was well understood or
controlled. St. Tammany’s reputation as a healthful and racially segre-
gated escape from New Orleans eventually led to its growth as a
predominantly white suburb of New Orleans in the 1940s and 50s.
This study contributes to ongoing geographical research on the
connections between racial identity and environment. Many of theseground-breaking inquiries in the past have focused on urban areas
(Anderson 1987) or questioned our conceptions of environmental justice
(Pulido 2000). Geographers have recently begun to address the dearth of
research on constructed racial and ethnic identities in the context of rural
environmental issues as well (McCarthy and Hague 2004). This study
presents an important analysis of the connections between racial identity
and environment in a rural area once famous for its healthful environmental
qualities. I contend that prominent whites within the parish worked tomaintain an environmentally-based health and tourism ‘‘industry’’ for the
white population exclusively, based on their normative understanding of
racial identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this
way, the healthful properties of St. Tammany’s environment, and its
reputation for healthfulness and safety, became connected with a white
racial identity.
Health and perceptions of the environment in this area of the piney
woods where tenant farming and sharecropping were not common alsoseparate this study from other geographical inquiries that have investigated
race in the former plantation areas of the US South. In St. Tammany
Parish, unlike other rural areas of the South, by 1880 only 7 percent of
farmers engaged in sharecropping or tenant farming (US Census Office
1880b). This indicates that both white and black residents of the parish had
a degree of spatial mobility not seen in areas of the South where debt
frequently kept tenant farmers and sharecroppers tied to the land (see
Wilson 2000). Elsewhere in the rural South in 1880, over 36 percent offarmers were tenant farmers, and this number increased to over 50 percent
by 1935. During this time, more than two thirds of all black farmers in the
South operated as tenants (Tindall 1967, p. 410). While conditions in St.
Tammany were far from social, political, or economic parity beween racial
groups, the relatively greater freedom of black folks within the parish (and
the piney-woods South) to travel and seek employment opportunities
destabilized some of the spatial and economic ‘‘fixes’’ of racial identity that
Southern whites relied on to maintain the racial hierarchy.
Journal of Cultural Geography 179
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While other areas of the piney-woods South—from Mississippi to
Georgia and the Carolinas—also had relatively spatially mobile rural
black populations (Jones 2005), St. Tammany’s antebellum cultural
history and geographic proximity to New Orleans made it unique with
regard to racial practices. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,the French and Spanish colonial customs and laws facilitating sexual
partnerships between people of Native American, African, and European
ancestries1 applied to the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain as well;
several significant communities of ‘‘mixed-race’’ people developed,
particularly along the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain and near Bayous
Lacombe and Bonfouca in the south-central area of the parish (Judge
Steve Ellis, 8 February 2007, personal interview). Between the years of
1880 and 1960, people of African ancestry (counted either as ‘‘black’’ or‘‘mulatto’’ in the census, depending on the year) lived primarily in the
southern half of the parish (US Census Office 1880a, 1900; US Bureau of
the Census 1920, 1943, 1961), which was also an area that every summer
brought thousands of white New Orleanians to escape the Crescent City
for a more healthful environment.
The association of healthfulness and a white racial identity in rural
areas may be an informative counterpart to the association of ill health
and noxious exposure with non-white racial identities in urban areas.Looking at race in this way, researchers may begin to understand how
perceptions of environment in rural areas reflect racism, racial identities,
and health in areas where land use and exposure to poor environmental
conditions is very different than in urban areas. This study also
investigates associations between race and healthfulness in a rural area
with significant communities of ‘‘multi-racial’’ identities in an area that
served as a health resort exclusively for white people.
For this historical and geographical research, I utilized a number ofarchival sources, local histories, and interviews with elderly black and
white residents of the parish. My interviews with these elderly residents
provided important first-hand accounts of the parish in the 1930s, 40s,
and 50s. Although memory is not a completely reliable source of
information, the memories of these residents of the parish shed some
light on how people in the area perceived the healthfulness, environment,
and racial politics in the parish. Primary sources such as lumber company
records, promotional materials, and state forestry bulletins providedadditional data. Federal census data, counted at the ward (a sub-parish
political division) level, also allowed for a more in depth understanding of
population distributions by racial group within parish boundaries.
I relied heavily on the local newspaper, The St. Tammany Farmer, as
the most extensive source of information on this rarely-researched area of
southern Louisiana. The Farmer has been the official newspaper of the
parish since the late 1800s. This paper changed editors a number of times
between 1878 and 1956, and concomitantly its political orientation shifted
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from the conservatism of the Bourbon Democrats in the late 1800s to the
Populism of Huey P. Long and his successors after the mid 1920s.
Following these political shifts, the Farmer clearly reflects the interests of
white business owners and farmers within the parish. For instance, W.G.
Kentzel, editor and owner of the paper from 1878 until the early 1900s,served as the secretary for the Covington Town Council, the secretary for
the parish Democratic Party, and the secretary for the Knights of Honor,
an organization promoting the labor and interests of white men. And
while The Farmer provides some coverage of black communities within the
parish, like many other white-owned newspapers across the country in this
time period, it frequently presents incomplete or biased information. As
the only extensive primary source of historical information on the parish,
however, The Farmer supplied the best data despite its flaws.
Race, health, and environment
Geographers, anthropologists, and historians in the last three decades
have conducted groundbreaking research using the main principle of
critical race theory: race is a social construction rather than a product of
biology. Racial identities and their social meanings have changed
significantly throughout history and space, dependent upon specific
economic, political, social, and geographical conditions and actions(Anderson 1987; Outlaw 1990; Roediger 1991; Delaney 1998; Hale
1998; McCarthy and Hague 2004; Schein 2006). This study likewise
follows this fruitful line of inquiry. I assert that different perceptions of
health and the environment became strongly associated with either white
or black racial identities, strengthening their ostensible legitimacy and
mutual exclusivity. In other words, belief in the restorative powers of
the environment in St. Tammany and their differential application to
white and black racial groups helped white leaders within the parishreinforce segregation and white privilege and ‘‘naturalize’’ their discrimi-
natory practices. Whites often focused on the presence or practices of
black people as tearing holes in the healthful safety net of the pines and
waters, whose benefits were the domain of the white population.
Scholars have extensively explored the association between margin-
alized racial groups and degraded environments, particularly in (sub)ur-
ban areas and in investigations of environmental ‘‘justice,’’ or unequal
exposure of different racial groups to toxic or polluting industries(Landphair 1999; Bullard 2000; Pulido 2000; Duncan and Duncan
2004). Historical geographers and historians have shown that in many
cases, segregation of different racial and immigrant groups in parts of
cities with deleterious environmental conditions was a very common
experience in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In North
America, poverty and residential policy frequently forced immigrants and
marginalized racial groups to reside in ramshackle or tenement housing in
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low-lying, poorly drained areas (Radford 1976; Kellogg 1977; Galishoff
1985; Anderson 1987; Ward 1989; Colten 2002). Lack of sanitary
infrastructure, crowded conditions, and poor drainage made these areas
particularly unhealthful and prone to disease, characteristics often
attributed to the racial group living in those quarters rather than theenvironment or infrastructure. Because of this, policy makers and white
residents often viewed those racial groups as inherently dirty or prone to
disease—a bodily state reflective of a similarly degraded moral state
(Anderson 1987; Sibley 1992; Gandy 2002). In this way, both rural and
urban environmental conditions and the health of racialized groups
seemingly corroborated a ‘‘natural’’ social hierarchy with a healthier, more
civilized white race at the top in the minds of many white people.
In St. Tammany Parish, this social hierarchy existed in a similarmanner in part through the fear of the spread of disease in black
communities even though this was not necessarily corroborated by disease
rates themselves. White residents of St. Tammany Parish often walked a
fine line between claims of the healthfulness of the environment within the
parish for whites (which necessarily implied that non-white groups were
healthy and thus non-threatening) and arguments that the environment
could not protect against the diseases of large numbers of black visitors
and migrants to the parish. The well-known presence of people of bothEuropean and African ancestries in the parish (often not-so-distantly
related to white residents of the parish [Judge Steve Ellis, 8 February 2007,
personal interview]) made the association between a white racial identity
and healthfulness more imperative for whites who promoted the image of
St. Tammany as a healthful escape.
Of course the idea that certain racial groups—for instance, black
people—were more prone to disease contradicts eighteenth and early
nineteenth century beliefs that black and other non-white people hadnatural resistance to tropical diseases and therefore were more suited for
plantation labor. And the idea of urban areas as degenerate and immoral
contradicted earlier eighteenth and nineteenth century beliefs in the health
and morality of settled areas. Eighteenth and early nineteenth century
settlers in the United States, for instance, believed that untamed nature
could threaten individual civility, morality, and racial identity by making a
white man or woman wild and dark-skinned (Anderson 2003; Valencius
2002).By the late nineteenth century, however, industrializing urban areas
were rife with social and public health problems, and urban residents
looked for rural ‘‘garden’’ escapes from gray, polluted landscapes. Urban
planners in New York, for instance, embraced the metaphorical concept
of green space—Central Park—as the ‘‘lungs’’ of the city to provide
atmospheric and social cleansing. This paradigm held that to relax and
enjoy nature (although clearly landscaped and designed by city planners)
amidst an unnatural urban landscape could restore a sense of physical
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health, civility, and morality for park visitors. The park space, with its
trees and ponds, equated with social and physical health; however, these
benefits were initially reserved for wealthy, white patrons as early
admittance to the park was expensive and exclusive (Gandy 2002).
Additionally, as knowledge of the spread of disease and awareness of
public health improved in many cities across the country, neighborhoods
segregated by race also became neighborhoods segregated by improve-
ments in sanitation. Elite white neighborhoods became the first areas to
benefit from new, expensive water and sewerage lines (Galishoff 1985;
Melosi 2000; Colten 2002). This initially strengthened the association
between white racial identities and health on one hand and non-white
racial identities and proclivity to illness on the other. Stuart Galishoff
(1985) explains this process in Atlanta in the mid-nineteenth century.
The deleterious living conditions of blacks elicited avariety of responses from
whites though nearly all agreed that blacks were disease-ridden because they
were biologically and morally inferior to whites. This was a sensitive issue for
whites, because the subordination of blacks was based, in part, on the belief in
their inferiority and inability to take care of themselves. (p. 26)
Eventually, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, city
officials in Atlanta (and in cities elsewhere) warmed to the idea that all
areas of the city should have improvements in sanitation, though the
impetus was once again the protection of the white or wealthy areas of the
city from disease originating in the poor or black areas of the city rather
than improvements in environmental quality for residents of those areas
(Galishoff 1985; Colten 2002).
Beginning in the post-bellum period, whites across the US but
particularly in the South, developed exclusionary and segregationist
laws with the ostensible goal of keeping people of different racial groups
separate and spatially distinct. Segregation and the Jim Crow laws
enforcing it were spatial and theoretical solutions to the problems of
rapidly changing social conditions in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, especially for whites (Hale 1998). With respect to
segregation, St. Tammany in many ways closely followed suit with other
areas of the South in attempting to keep the established racial hierarchy in
place; however, white leaders and other residents of St. Tammany Parish
applied these exclusionary practices to the healthfulness of their environ-
ment as well.
Natural springs, pines, and the wonder of ‘‘ozone’’
St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, is located in the piney-woods belt that
extends in a swath from east Texas to the Carolinas. Acidic soils and a
dense covering of pine trees precluded St. Tammany from ever becoming
Journal of Cultural Geography 183
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productive for the types of intensive agriculture that existed elsewhere in
southern Louisiana. This meant two things for the history and geography
of the parish. First, St. Tammany had very little plantation agriculture
either before or after the Civil War. Historians consider many of the
people (with some notable exceptions) living in St. Tammany ‘‘piney-
woods folk’’: relatively poor people with very small land holdings (if any)
that relied on subsistence crops and raising cattle in the woods (Lockett
[1891] 1969; Ellis 1981; Hyde 1996). In St. Tammany, the piney-woods
folk included both white and black people. While people of African
descent generally constituted between 25 and 40 percent of the population
between 1880 and 1960, they never constituted a majority in the parish as
they did in the ‘‘plantation’’ parishes and counties in the South. People of
(ostensibly) mixed European and African ancestry (counted as ‘‘mulatto’’
in the census) comprised between a quarter and half of the ‘‘black’’
population in the parish between 1880a and 19202 (US Census Office
1880, 1900; US Bureau of the Census 1920, 1943, 1961).Secondly, the pine trees in effect became the principal economic engine
and tourist attraction for the parish in the late eighteenth and early
twentieth centuries. The healthful environment created in part by the pine
trees drew visitors to the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain for roughly a
century. Dating back to the 1830s, the town of Mandeville, and later
Covington and Abita Springs in western St. Tammany Parish, attracted
summer visitors from New Orleans. With the increased risk of mosquito-
spread yellow fever during the hot and rainy summer months in New
Orleans, white families of means sought refuge on the North Shore of
Lake Pontchartrain. In 1878, the year of the last major outbreak of yellow
fever in New Orleans, an estimated 40,000 fled the city, with ‘‘thousands’’
arriving at the North Shore (Trask 2005). These visitors typically stayed in
grand hotels and boarding houses, which were segregated by race, or they
roomed with friends or family members. In the post-bellum period,
steamer ships made the trip between New Orleans and the North Shore in
approximately three hours, which opened the opportunity to visit the
North Shore to those travelers who could only afford to stay for the day or
weekend (Baughman 1962; Ellis 1981; Nicholls 1990). These steam ships
also allowed many St. Tammany residents to travel to New Orleans for
both pleasure and business. During these years, St. Tammany Parish, with
a population of just under 7,000 in 1880 (US Census Office 1880),
developed a reputation as ‘‘wholesome’’ in contrast to the tumultuous
urban environment of New Orleans, a place ‘‘unsafe for an honest man
from the piney woods’’ (St. Tammany Farmer 1880b, p. 4). The town of
Covington in western St. Tammany Parish had such a reputation for
health that for several years the local newspaper ran advertisements and
articles promoting the town as the ‘‘Healthiest Place in World’’ (Figure 1)
based on vital statistics (St. Tammany Farmer 1910, p. 1).
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Just what was so special about the environment of St. Tammany Parish
that drew hundreds, sometimes thousands of visitors every year and
supposedly kept residents healthy and moral? In the early and mid
nineteenth century, clearly many Americans—not just in St. Tammany
Parish and New Orleans but throughout the country—understood that
low-lying, swampy environments filled with decaying matter somehow
caused ill health, long before microbiology or parasitology had advanced
to the realm of public health (Valencius 2002). St. Tammany Parish did
have its share of swampy areas, particularly along the lakefront and near
its numerous rivers and bayous; however, much of the area of the parish,
including areas along the lakefront itself, had large, beautiful tracts of
pine trees and relatively well-drained soils. This environment (and
population density) aesthetically and physically differed greatly from the
environment south of Lake Pontchartrain, and more specifically New
Orleans, so residents believed that the trees and soils provided healthful
tonics. Good health in turn led to strong individual and community
morality (Valencius 2002; Gandy 2002).
Water on the North Shore likewise differed in quality from water
available to the South Shore. Residents of St. Tammany Parish took their
drinking water from relatively clean rivers and natural mineral springs;
whereas New Orleans residents were supplied drinking water from the
Mississippi River (Colten 2006). Residents of St. Tammany and visitors
often commented on the superiority of the drinking water in the Bogue
Falaya (a river in western St. Tammany Parish) in contrast to the ‘‘mud
soup’’ provided to New Orleans residents from the Mississippi. In fact, in
1882 the state legislature considered a bill that would have allowed the St.
Tammany Waterworks Company to pipe its wholesome water from the
Bogue Falaya to New Orleans as the principal source of drinking water,
replacing the New Orleans Waterworks Company as the sole provider of
New Orleans’ municipal water supply. Litigation eventually kept this plan
from coming to fruition, but the idea of ‘‘piping in’’ a healthful resource
from the North Shore attests to the late nineteenth century distinction
between the clean and healthful environment of St. Tammany and
the often polluted and difficult urban environment of New Orleans
Figure 1. Covington, La. The healthiest place in the world. Source: St. Tammany
Farmer 1910, p. 1.
Journal of Cultural Geography 185
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(St. Tammany Farmer 1882a, p. 4; New Orleans Waterworks Company
1883, p. 6; New Orleans Waterworks Company 1886, p. 1; St. Tammany
Farmer 1887, p. 4).
The St. Tammany Farmer often boosted the healthful qualities of
waters in the parish, claiming that they were ‘‘beneficial in cases of
consumption, catarrh, bronchitis, and all other diseases of the lungs and
throat’’ and a variety of liver and urinary tract diseases (St. Tammany
Farmer 1880c, p. 4; St. Tammany Farmer 1882b, p. 4). In the late
nineteenth century, physicians often prescribed bathing in or drinking
mineral waters to alleviate a large number of disorders. Typically these
recommendations included lengthy stays at natural ‘‘spas’’ where patients
could take the waters daily while engaging in moderate exercise, plenty of
sleep, and a healthful diet (Moorman 1873). The writers for the St.
Tammany Farmer, while no doubt appreciative of the healthful water in St.
Tammany, shrewdly chose to highlight an aspect of their environment that
they hoped would draw the attention of patients and visitors nationwide.
The late-nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries were the peak decades
for travel to natural springs for restoration of health throughout the
country (Valenza 2000), and local businessmen and women in St.
Tammany sought to increase tourism and investment in local economy
(Figure 2).
Although limited, evidence suggests that the advertising of the
healthful waters and the calls for patients were designated for—even
restricted to—white patrons. In this way, the associations between
improved health, use of the natural springs in St. Tammany, and a white
racial identity were quite strong and consistent between the late 1800s and
early 1900s. For instance, the most well-known natural spring in St.
Tammany, the ‘‘famous Abita Springs’’ for which that town is named, was
Figure 2. Ozone belt hotel and cottages. Source: Sanford and Sanford 1905.
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located on private property where owners had constructed a hotel and
dancing pavilion reserved exclusively for white patrons. And while
segregated bathing facilities were available for black patrons on the South
Shore of Lake Pontchartrain (Baughman 1962), additional research
suggests that wealthy people of African descent from New Orleans andelsewhere in the South most frequently traveled north to resort towns such
as Sarasota Springs, Coney Island, or Newport where, though segregated,
lodging and businesses for black patrons flourished (Aron 1999;
Sterngrass 2001, p. 106). If smaller, less famous artesian springs or
facilities that black patrons could visit did exist in the parish, the local
newspaper, Sanborn Fire Insurance maps (Sanborn Map Company 1921,
1922, 1926, 1930), and promotional materials did not mention them,
further corroborating the fact that white business owners, newspapermen,and civic leaders hoped to attract white visitors to the parish. St.
Tammany’s fame as a healthful place rested heavily on its provision of
medicinal services to white patrons.
The restorative waters of St. Tammany and environmental distinctions
between the North and South Shores were just two aspects of its
reputation as a healthful place. Perhaps the most significant element
was the pine trees themselves. Boosters proclaimed that their beauty and
grandeur inspired lofty and peaceful thoughts, allowing visitors to sloughoff the worries associated with city life and become ‘‘imbued with a new
existence’’ (St. Tammany Farmer 1880c, p. 4). Although aesthetically
beneficial to health and state-of-mind, the pine trees, according to the
science of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, also released a
chemical called ‘‘ozone,’’ which sanitized the lungs and sinuses and
prevented other diseases. Doctors and others across the Gulf South
believed that ozone killed yellow fever ‘‘germs.’’ What those germs were,
or how yellow fever was actually spread (mosquitoes), they did notunderstand until the early 1900s (Grob 2002).
Of course the ‘‘ozone’’ emitted by the pine trees was not a pollutant but
rather a name for the fresh, antiseptic fragrance of the trees. St. Tammany
Parish, in the heart of the ‘‘World Famous Ozone Belt’’ (Figure 3),
attracted patients from across the United States for the treatment of
various lung diseases—including tuberculosis. Several important sanitaria,
or tuberculosis treatment hospitals, opened within the parish and served
white tuberculosis patients. Other places across the US South garneredrenown for their high ozone levels, and doctors and businessmen opened
sanitaria and resorts in these locations as well (Dunbar 1966). The St.
Tammany Farmer reported that several scientific studies conducted in the
1880s and 1890s confirmed that St. Tammany Parish had the highest levels
of ozone in Louisiana and perhaps the entire country (St. Tammany
Farmer 1886, p. 4; St. Tammany Farmer 1893, p. 4). Typical treatment for
tubercular patients and for those stricken with other types of lung and
sinus infections included spending long amounts of time (or sleeping) on a
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screened-in porch in warm weather so the patient could inhale as much
ozone as possible (Inez Thomas, 15 November 2005, personal interview).Scientific theory in the late 1800s stipulated that the beneficial effects
of ozone extended beyond the individual body into the community as a
whole. Observing what they saw as a correlation between the presence of
ozone and a healthful society, some medical doctors and others stipulated
that ozone had a morally cleansing effect on society as well. For instance,
Dr. C Hamilton Tebault of New Orleans theorized that ozone did not just
kill ‘‘germs’’ but acted as an ‘‘acknowledged elixir of exhilaration and
hopefulness.’’ According to Dr. Tebault,
The community that lives in an area free from disease germs, that feels that life
is hopeful, has a physical and mental optimistic strength that is impreg-
nable to disease, immorality or despondent thoughts. (St. Tammany Farmer
1897a, p. 4)
Figure 3. The World Famous Ozone Belt. Source: Sanford and Sanford 1905
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In other words, the absence of yellow fever and other diseases (believed to
be eradicated by the ozone from the pine trees) allowed people to focus on
being good, moral people, which in turn provided them with further
protection against disease.
This seems like a fairly optimistic statement until it is put into context.New Orleans, St. Tammany’s neighbor to the South and the location of
Dr. Tebault’s practice, had a very large population of African descent as
well as a very large immigrant population. The most destitute of these two
groups lived in poorly drained areas in New Orleans and in the crowded,
dilapidated French Quarter of the late 1800s and early 1900s (Colten 2002,
Crutcher 2006). Doctors and public health officials until the turn of the
century did not know that mosquitoes spread the deadly yellow fever
virus, but they suspected that the disease emanated from areas filled withdecaying garbage and festering gutters—conditions that typified those of
Sicilian immigrants and black residents living in the French Quarter
(Edwards-Simpson 1996). When the first cases of yellow fever in New
Orleans in 1905 emerged in the French Quarter, Sicilians, who whites
often considered a non-white race, were blamed for the spread of the
disease. Many people in New Orleans blamed the outbreak of the disease
on Sicilians’ ‘‘natural’’ proclivity toward filth and their close proximity to
people of African descent, characteristics which were caused by—and inturn caused—their criminality and immorality in the minds of many white
New Orleanians.3 The underlying message contained in Dr. Tebault’s
articulation of the connection between disease, immorality and health is
that black (and other non-white) residents of New Orleans had disease,
immorality, and despondent thoughts and so were prone to the same—an
ostensibly unbreakable cycle strongly associated with black and other
non-white racial identities.
The question of health and race in St. Tammany Parish with regard toozone is a complicated one. The pine trees in St. Tammany Parish yielded
an abundance of ozone perceived to protect both white and black
residents of the parish. To follow the logic of the day, the ozone must
have protected those black residents who lived in the area because St.
Tammany as a whole had low numbers or no cases of yellow fever,
particularly during the 1878 outbreak that killed over 4,000 people in New
Orleans. People of African ancestry in St. Tammany lived primarily in the
southern half of the parish, which was closer to Lake Pontchartrain andcontained a number of swampy areas; however, many of these low-lying
areas had equal numbers of white residents or a white majority.
Additionally, in the towns of western St. Tammany, there was no apparent
correlation between poorly drained areas of town and areas that had
higher numbers of black residents (US Census Office 1880a, 1900; US
Bureau of the Census 1920, 1943, 1961; Sanborn Map Company 1921,
1922, 1926, 1930). This indicates that proximity to poorly drained areas
and disease in St. Tammany were not tied to areas of particular racial
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groups as they had been in New Orleans. But as my research shows, just
because St. Tammany residents believed that ozone had protected the
parish from disease in the past did not necessarily mean that black people
in the parish were free from guilt or vulnerability when it came to disease
and criminality—at least in the minds of many white people. In fact, whitepeople in St. Tammany greatly feared that the susceptibility of the black
population to various diseases could eventually harm the health of the
white population. When it came to the extension of hospitality to New
Orleanians or other visitors seeking a healthful asylum from disease, the
white residents and local government in St. Tammany Parish fought very
hard to protect its reputation as a healthful place exclusively for white
people.
The color of health
In 1878, yellow fever ravaged New Orleans between the months of June
and November, ultimately killing over 4,000 people. An estimated 40,000New Orleanians fled the city during those months, thousands of them
seeking refuge on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain in the towns of
Mandeville and Covington (Trask 2005, p. 81). Considering the devasta-
tion and fear witnessed on the South Shore in New Orleans, coverage of
the epidemic in the St. Tammany Farmer was remarkably thin, even non-
existent. The following summer in 1879, however, the editor of the paper
encouraged visitors from New Orleans to once again visit St. Tammany to
protect themselves against outbreaks of the disease.
It would scarcely be possible to find a more healthy [sic] locality, in any
country, than St. Tammany. The cholera has never been here, that we are
aware of; but we believe there were a few cases of yellow fever in Covington,
years ago, although it was imported and never spread. While the fever was
raging in New Orleans last year, Covington proved an harbor of safety for
many refugees, and not a single case of fever occurred here; we established
no quarantine against New Orleans, and persons were passing back and
forth all the time. (St. Tammany Farmer 1879a, p. 4)
When a few cases of yellow fever did break out again in 1879, Editor
Kentzel reiterated that health on the North Shore was ‘‘still good,’’ and
that there were enough rooms and housing to accommodate any New
Orleanian seeking shelter (St. Tammany Farmer 1879b, p. 4).The yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans in 1878 invigorated the
hotel and resort industry in St. Tammany Parish. Businessmen and
women built large hotels in Covington, Mandeville, and in a growing area
outside of Covington—Abita Springs (Ellis 1981; Austin 2005; St.
Tammany Farmer 1880d, p. 4). The lumber companies operating in
the parish also built several hotels in Abita Springs and Slidell, a new
railroad town at the east end of the parish (St. Tammany Farmer 1884,
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p. 5; St. Tammany Farmer 1888, p. 4). The owners of these new hotels
designated them exclusively for white patrons.
While it is unclear if St. Tammany received black and other non-white
residents of New Orleans during the 1878 yellow fever epidemic, that St.
Tammany refused entry to non-white people during later outbreaks isquite evident. During the summer of 1897, the town of Mandeville
instituted a ‘‘modified quarantine’’ against the City of New Orleans,
requiring that anyone who entered the town to carry a certificate ‘‘to the
effect that he is in good health; that he has not been in contact with any
one affected with yellow fever; [and] that he has not been within any
quarantined locality in the city of New Orleans . . .’’ (St. Tammany Farmer
1897b, p. 4). Mandeville enforced this policy by placing armed guards
along all major roads into the town. The modified quarantine did notexplicitly exclude individuals based on race, but the location of
quarantined areas in the city and the ability of black New Orleanians to
obtain certificates verifying their health status suggest that the enforce-
ment of the quarantine was partially predicated on racial identity. Eight
years later in 1905, the year of the last major yellow fever epidemic in New
Orleans, St. Tammany Parish officials left no doubt that they accepted
only white New Orleanians from certain areas of the city. Despite its
nominal ‘‘open-door policy’’ with New Orleans and the power of theenvironment on the North Shore to prevent yellow fever outbreaks, St.
Tammany officials nonetheless refused entry to a ‘‘rush of Sicilians,
presumably from the infected district’’ and forced them to return to New
Orleans on the train (St. Tammany Farmer 1905, p. 5, emphasis added).
This rejection of a non-white immigrant group (see Scarpaci 2003)
occurred despite the fact that public health officials had already
recognized that mosquito control programs and insecticides worked very
effectively to control the spread of yellow fever.This increased incentive on the part of whites to keep St. Tammany
healthful by allowing only white visitors reflects a shift in the belief of the
power of the environment in St. Tammany. As scientific research began to
uncover the means by which diseases such as yellow fever and tuberculosis
were spread and treated, belief in the mysterious qualities of the
environment to provide protection to whites (and non-white people)
diminished. One way public officials and others on the North Shore saw
to keep their community healthful was to maintain strict color boundarieswith respect to medical treatment even to the point of the exclusion of
treatment centers for black people. On several occasions, parish and
municipal governments in St. Tammany vehemently fought the establishment
of hospitals and clinics either exclusively for black patrons or perceived to
cater to a mostly-black clientele.
The first of these rejections of treatment centers for black people
occurred in 1894 when the Louisiana state legislature considered the
placement of a Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) hospital at Fort Pike on
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the eastern edge of Lake Pontchartrain between Slidell and New Orleans.
The editor of the St. Tammany Farmer, reflecting the opinions of local
government and business leaders, insisted that ‘‘IT MUST NOT BE!’’ (St.
Tammany Farmer 1894a, p. 4, emphasis in original). Part of local leaders’
reluctance to establish a treatment hospital on the edge of St. Tammany
was their association of the spread of leprosy with a black racial identity.
The paper ran an editorial that was originally published in the New
Orleans Daily States. In the editorial, white fears of the poor health and
indiscretions of black people are clear.
These schooners [which pass the Rigolets] . . . are manned by negroes, and
many of the lepers here, I judge, are negroes. In case of a storm these
schooners are most likely to put in shore, and the lepers seeing the vessels
and feeling that a chance of escape may be near will take any measure to
communicate with the crews of the schooners, and to escape if there is any
chance to do so. We all know how negroes are. They do not seem to be
afraid of such diseases, and would be very likely to take aboard any one they
would take a fancy to and land him ashore where he could spread his
disease . . . .If the outside public ever come to believe that this section of St.
Tammany is next door neighbor to a hospital for the unclean, the entire
surrounding country will be affected and shunned. The swarms of flies and
mosquitoes which gather in the marshes and hang about the old Fort Pike
are not infrequently driven far into the heart of St. Tammany by the strong
East winds, and with lepers for their prey much of the time the chances of a
communication of the disease would be very materially increased . . .. (St.
Tammany Farmer 1894a, p. 4)
Of course Hansen’s Disease is not spread by mosquitoes, but this editorial
explains how residents of the parish believed the disease might spread
from predominantly black areas of the parish to predominantly white
areas of the parish despite the fact that they were becoming increasingly
segregated (addressed below). Local commentators likewise suspected that
black people living within the parish would be susceptible to the disease
because black people with leprosy would ‘‘be scattered among the many
colored people unsuspected and safe’’ (St. Tammany Farmer 1894b, p. 4).
At the end of the year, the state legislature decided on the temporary
placement of a treatment facility at Carville, Louisiana, on an isolated,
abandoned plantation upriver from New Orleans. This hospital later
became both the permanent state facility and the national treatment
center for Hansen’s Disease (Gussow 1989), thus ending the crisis and
controversy for many St. Tammany residents.White residents of St. Tammany not only fought against treatment
centers for black residents with frightening diseases, such as Hansen’s
Disease; they also protested the establishment of a home for the care of
elderly black people. In 1902, the Mandeville Town Council received a
letter from a black community organization attesting to the fact that they
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had put their plans for a black retirement home on hold. A letter written
by Reverend FJ Davidson, president of the association reads,
Gentlemen [of the council] we have abandoned the idea of building an old
folks home near your town since we are informed that your white citizens
have raised some objections to building of an old folks home. We want the
friendly co-operation of the white citizens of Mandeville. (Mandeville Town
Council 1902)
In this case, white residents of the town of Mandeville made it known (by
what means is not evident through this letter or in council minutes) that a
retirement home for black residents would not be welcome in or near the
town.
In 1918, white residents of St. Tammany once again debated whether
or not their healthy environment and reputation could withstand the
treatment of patients of African ancestry. The Louisiana Tuberculosis
Commission, acting in concert with the State Board of Health, pursued an
interest in extending the operations of Camp Hygeia in St. Tammany
Parish (a tuberculosis treatment facility already established for indigent
white patients) to include the treatment of ‘‘negroes.’’ Parish officials and
white business leaders vigorously protested tuberculosis treatment for
black people in the parish. The Farmer ran an editorial discussing the
issue.
St. Tammany parish people are as cordial and hospitable as can be found
anywhere, and they welcomed the sick who have come here for the benefit of
its wonderful climate, but it draws the line at being made the dumping
ground for negroes afflicted with tuberculosis. (St. Tammany Farmer 1918,
p. 1)
Despite the fact that untreated tuberculosis among black residents of the
parish could be highly contagious and risky for public health for all racial
groups, white residents feared the growth of the black population in the
parish and so protested the extension of tuberculosis treatment to black
tuberculars. They additionally feared that the reputation of the parish as a
healthful place for whites—and source of income from tourism to the
parish—would be significantly injured. Later that same year, the town
councils of Mandeville and Covington issued statements arguing that
treatment of black tuberculars was important, but that such a treatment
facility should not exist in St. Tammany Parish (Mandeville Town Council
1918; Covington Town Council 1918).
Enhanced understanding of microbiology and public health by the
1910s and 1920s did not negate perceived connections between race and
disease. In fact, in many ways, doctors throughout Louisiana and the
country scrambled to integrate new medical discoveries with racist
assumptions of the past. For instance, in attempts to improve the health
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of all racial groups within the state, the Louisiana State Board of Health
operated on the assumption that black Louisianans were biologically
more prone to disease and thus dangerous to the white population.
Even though we lay aside the humanitarian and economic interests
associated with the negro race, we still have to face the obvious biologic
fact that this race of people is both potentially and actually more capable of
disseminating disease among the white people than are the white people
among themselves. Never having had the opportunity to develop natural
immunity and resistance to bacterial invasion that is normally acquired
through the evolution of ages, and having had artificially thrust upon them
a civilization to which they are not biologically adapted, it is only natural
that tuberculosis and syphilis should invade the race until they become
exterminated . . . .The white race cannot hope to materially decrease their
communicable disease incidence until the health standard of the negro is
raised. (Louisiana State Board of Health 1919, p. 19)
The State Board of Health viewed the higher incidence of tuberculosis (in
parishes other than St. Tammany) among black people (see Louisiana
State Board of Health 1919�1951) as a reflection on their morality,
civility, and capabilities as human beings rather than as a result of poor
living conditions, poor nutrition, and poor education about the spread of
the disease. Although the State Board of Health acknowledged the
importance of treatment facilities, leading doctors in the state and those
working for the Board of Health still closely associated vulnerability to
and prevalence of disease with race.If tuberculosis could infect an individual regardless of morality
(although immorality would make a person more susceptible to the
disease, according to late nineteenth century thought), syphilis, as a
sexually-transmitted disease, was directly tied to morality—and race.
Throughout Louisiana in the 1910s and 1920s, syphilis and gonorrhea
were frequently the leading causes of death, outnumbering deaths from
influenza, smallpox, malaria, and tuberculosis, depending on the season
(St. Tammany Farmer 1919, p. 2; St. Tammany Farmer 1920, p. 2; St.
Tammany Farmer 1921, p. 2; St. Tammany Farmer 1922, p. 2). Of this
number, black men and women tended to have an infection rate six times
higher than white men and women (Louisiana State Board of Health
1939, p. 15), and this was true in St. Tammany Parish as well. Whites in St.
Tammany associated this disease with the moral depravity of black people.
Events during the wartime draft of 1943 substantiate this claim. Despite
action taken by the Police Jury and town councils in the past to prevent
the establishment of treatment facilities for black people, in 1943 these
local governments came together to legally decree that all infected black
men have treatment for their venereal diseases. Why? As venereal disease
was a reason a draftee could be deferred or rejected from military service
during World War II, white men had a higher draft rate than black men
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living within the parish. White leaders and many white residents in the
parish viewed this escape from military service (despite the fact that the
majority of black men were still accepted into service) as proof that black
residents were naturally immoral, unpatriotic, uncivilized brutes whose
insatiable sexual appetites took precedence over ‘‘a higher type of
citizenship’’ (St. Tammany Farmer 1943, p. 1; St. Tammany Parish Police
Jury 1943). Once again, whites drew connections between immorality,
disease and race. By the 1950s, doctors across the country began using
antibiotics to successfully cure syphilis and gonorrhea, which in Louisiana
were still viewed as ‘‘black problems.’’ (Figure 4). The State Board of
Health petitioned the federal government for additional testing and
educational resources across the state to control syphilis in its large
‘‘Negro’’ population (Louisiana State Board of Health 1951).
In St. Tammany, the healthful qualities of the environment were
associated with a white racial identity and reserved for whites. As medical
and public health knowledge improved, and reliance upon the pines and
mineral waters to protect health declined, medical treatment was still
disproportionately reserved for whites in the parish. In the mid 1950s,
doctors in the parish began to extend better medical care to black residents,
but treatment remained largely unequal. When two state-of-the-art
hospitals opened in St. Tammany in the mid 1950s, the Southeastern
Louisiana Mental Hospital and St. Tammany Parish Hospital, they did
offer services to black patrons, but these services were completely
segregated and of lesser quality. For instance, when St. Tammany Parish
Hospital opened in 1954, it had 30 private and semi-private rooms, and
Figure 4. Louisiana Board of Health tests children for syphilis. Source: Courtesy
Louisiana Board of Health 1951.
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only three of the later were ‘‘reserved for Negroes,’’ who at the time
comprised at least 25 percent of the population (St. Tammany Farmer
1954, p. 1; US Bureau of the Census 1943, 1961).
White residents in St. Tammany Parish not only excluded blacks from
treatment centers located in the healthful environment of the piney woods,they also blocked the establishment of public parks for use by black
residents and visitors to the parish. By the 1950s, demand grew across the
South for state parks accessible to black visitors. In 1952, state parks
across the South were segregated by race, and only twelve out of 192 state
parks were designated for black patrons. None of these twelve was located
in Louisiana (O’Brien 2007, pp. 167�169). In 1956, a group of black
residents of St. Tammany Parish asked the parish Police Jury to petition
the State Parks Commission for the creation of a black park on state-owned land located near Bayou Lacombe in a predominantly black area
of the parish. The Police Jury instead proposed an extension of
Fontainebleau State Park (an exclusively white park) to take advantage
of existing maintenance buildings and staff. The Police Jury soon dropped
the plan after white residents complained that the establishment of ‘‘such
a park’’ at that location would devalue their property (St. Tammany
Farmer 1956a, p. 4; St. Tammany Farmer 1956b, p. 1; St. Tammany Farmer
1956c, p. 1).
Conclusion: a suburban oasis
For nearly 100 years, St. Tammany Parish served as a health resort for
wealthy white New Orleanians who sought to avoid or cure a number of
diseases, including yellow fever and tuberculosis. In the 1880s, Covington,
Louisiana, in western St. Tammany Parish, was touted ‘‘the World’s
Healthiest Place.’’ This reputation for health was strongly anchored to a
cultivated and defended association with white patients within the parish.White leaders blocked attempts to construct clinics and hospitals for the
treatment of diseases they believed affected primarily black and other
non-white people. White residents of the parish kept the health-restoring
resources of the parish—the pines and natural springs—under their
purview, reserving them for white use and using them to encourage white
tourism and migration to the parish.
By the 1940s, developers began to plan large subdivisions in
anticipation of the development of a bridge across Lake Pontchartrainconnecting western St. Tammany Parish with New Orleans and cutting
travel time in half. While no neighborhood covenant or plan exists in the
St. Tammany Parish Land Records Office that explicitly identifies these
new subdivisions as ‘‘white’’ neighborhoods, census records indicate a
rapid increase in the white population of the parish. The white population
in 1920 comprised roughly 63 percent of the parish population, but by
1960, this had climbed to 73 percent as the overall population in the
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parish nearly doubled from approximately 20,613 to 38,563 (US Bureau of
the Census 1943, 1961). Anecdotal evidence from the St. Tammany
Farmer (see St. Tammany Farmer 1944, p. 2 for a description of
subdivisions for ‘‘colored’’ people) further suggests that these neighbor-
hoods were entirely segregated by race. In 1956, developers completed theLake Pontchartrain Causeway (St. Tammany Farmer 1956d, p. 1), which
quickened the pace of white suburbanization of the parish. The comple-
tion of the Causeway occurred just two years after the US Supreme Court
handed down the pivotal Brown v. Board of Education decision, which
ignited a furious battle in New Orleans over school integration. As many
white New Orleanians had done for years, they sought refuge from harm
(or what they perceived as harm) in the reputedly healthful, white
environment of St. Tammany Parish. Names of new subdivisions in theparish—West Beach Parkway, Golden Shores, Flowers Estates and later
Beau Chene and Pineland Park—pay homage to elements of the
environment that parish residents once considered critical to their health
and safety.
By the 1950s, the idea of ‘‘ozone’’ lingered on only in the names of
local businesses, and the ‘‘Famous Abita Springs’’ had been shut down by
the Louisiana Board of Health for bacterial contamination (Louisiana
State Board of Health 1941, p. 43). The larger connections between socialhealth and white privilege on the North Shore, however, survived
remarkably intact. Reflecting on the words of the local poet in 1880,
‘‘. . . gone are the heartaches, the crimes, the remorse, the unavailing tears
of the later times . . .,’’ we can see that seventy years later, white residents
of the parish (and recent migrants from New Orleans) continued to see St.
Tammany as an escape from the conditions in New Orleans they found
unhealthful and dangerous.
Despite St. Tammany Parish’s rather unique connections with NewOrleans, a city historically famous for more fluid practices regarding race,
this rural parish—with a significant population of African ancestry—de-
veloped in part as a healthful retreat closely identified with a white racial
identity. The association between a white racial identity, environment, and
healthfulness on the North Shore pre-dated advances in public health,
microbiology, and the construction of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.
Importantly though, the image of the North Shore as a safe and healthful
alternative to life on the South Shore survived these changes. Today, theparish is over 87 percent white, and with a median household income of
just over $47,000, it is one of the wealthiest parishes in Louisiana (US
Census Bureau 2000). Although most residents no longer perceive the
parish as a healthful environment attributable to the medicinal waters and
‘‘ozone’’ (Inez Thomas, 15 November 2005, personal interview; Judge
Steve Ellis, 8 February 2007, personal interview; Reverend Leo Edgerson,
8 February 2007, personal interview), they still view it as a safe place to
live. St. Tammany Parish has become a community of gated sub-divisions
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and strip malls, which fill in the spaces between the older, historic parts of
towns and disguise the fact that the idea of St. Tammany as a healthful,
safe, white suburb began in the late 1800s.
Notes
1. French and Spanish legal systems allowed and regulated ‘‘interracial’’ sexual
relationships in part through identifying people of mixed ancestry as a ‘‘middle-
tier’’ race—the gens de couleur libre (free people of color) who had specific
rights. Children of interracial unions were also considered ‘‘natural’’ as
opposed to ‘‘illegitimate’’ and could inherit wealth and property from their
white fathers (Sterkx 1972).
2. Census marshals clearly applied the classification ‘‘mulatto’’ inconsistently;
furthermore, of the census years used in this study, only 1880 and 1920 used
mulatto as a separate racial category.
3. White New Orleanians were so convinced of Sicilians’ ‘‘natural’’ inferiority and
criminality that a mob of hundreds of white men lynched eleven Sicilian men in
1891 who were acquitted of murdering the chief of police.
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