Health and Healthcare Management in a California Black Town

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

After the dissolution of the Reconstruction Era, black Americans were faced with the legislative and social constraints of the Jim Crow Era. These limitations on life spurred a call to action to create black settlements free of white supremacy and anti-black sentiments, such as the settlement of Allensworth. The town of Allensworth, located in Tulare County of California’s Central Valley, was founded by Col. Allen Allensworth in 1908, becoming California’s first self-governed and economically independent African American town. This research focuses on addressing how this community negotiated healthcare choices and health related life experiences while living on the social and physical periphery. The abundance of pain-relieving medicines analyzed in the Allensworth assemblage sheds perspective on the daily management of pain the residents experienced while fulfilling their dreams of a blackutopia. By examining the communities medicine bottle assemblage, we can illuminate how a marginalized group navigated the daily, individual, and collective, need for healthcare and have a better understanding of the human experience in revolutionary towns, such as Allensworth. In the specific case of Allensworth and towns like it, this research adds to the growing discourse on Postbellum black American settlements and their experiences.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33138