Tabulating the 1890 Census

The 1890 Census included social, health, and economic indicators for the first generation of emancipated African Americans in the South, as well as indicators of the status of African Americans living in the North. Anti-black race-writers interpreted these indicators as evidence that African Americans were a “diseased and dying” population group. High incidences of contagious diseases, particularly tuberculosis, and high rates of criminal incarceration among African Americans were casually and falsely assumed to be indicators of biological inferiority. The anti-Black race-writers gave no consideration to the alternative explanation, today accepted as fact by leading historians and sociologists, namely that discriminatory housing, health, employment, and policing policies and practices were the source of the negative trends recorded in the census.