A poster at the Havre de Grace Colored School honors Dr. George T. Stansbury
For years, I have studied African American health care, seeking to understand the history of practices before Black Americans gained access to mainstream medicine. This fieldwork has given me the opportunity to interview nurses, aides, physicians, and tradition bearers in communities across Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
So when the Association for the Study of African American Life and History selected “Black Health and Wellness” as its 2022 theme, a couple of organizations asked me to discuss the contributions of two medical pioneers in Maryland.
Dr. Stansbury in Havre de Grace
In the 20th century, African American physicians established practices in more communities. In Harford County, Dr. George T. Stansbury opened his office in Havre de Grace in 1950. But the Howard University College of Medicine graduate could not admit patients to Harford Memorial Hospital, which maintained a segregated ward.
In 1960, a tragedy occurred at the hospital when the staff initially denied a young Black woman full access to all the labor and delivery facilities after medical complications developed. Dr. Stansbury spent the night with the patient, doing what he could to save the newborn and mother. But, both passed away. The father sued, and in 1963, the hospital agreed to integrate.
For the Cecil County Chapter of the NAACP, I talked about Dr. James L. Johnson. The graduate of Meharry Medical College, a Freedmen’s Bureau-era School in Nashville, TN, came to Elkton to open his office in 1934. When Dr. Johnson started practicing medicine in the middle of the Great Depression, the county’s health care system was segregated, like every other aspect of life in Cecil County. To admit patients to Union Hospital, Doctor Johnson made arrangements with one of the community’s white physicians.
The segregated system for patient care remained in place until landmark civil rights decisions in the 1960s forced changes. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, hospital desegregation rulings in the federal courts, the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, and other initiatives created a Civil Rights era in health care. Consequently, the separate wards system ended in Elkton as Doctor Johnson received full staff privileges. The respected physician maintained a busy practice until the 1970s.
It is important to remember those who paved the way for the current generation and the difficulties they faced.
As the nation marks 50 years since the remnants of Hurricane Agnes ripped across Maryland, WBAL-TV’s Tommie Clark stopped by the Conowingo Dam to interview me about the destructive storm’s impact on Maryland.
The Weather Service downgraded the hurricane to a tropical storm by the time it hit Maryland on June 21, 1972. But Agnes stalled over Pennsylvania and New York, causing the worst flooding on record for the Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania and northeastern Maryland.
Mike Dixon talking to WBAL about Hurricane Agnes
As a record rainfall soaked the river basin between June 21 and 24, the flood-swollen waterway spread over a wide area. Once all the gates on the Conowingo Dam opened Port Deposit’s Main Street filled with rushing water. Earlier, officials ordered a mandatory evacuation — only one small part of a block in the center of town remained dry as rescue boats floated down Main Street.
Havre de Grace, Port Deposit, Perryville, and other places suffered enormous destruction. Those who lived through this record-breaking storm will never forget the destructive force that disrupted lives. So as we mark the passage of a half-century, 11 news Baltimore, took a look back at the damage and the progress made in weather forecasting in “Hurricane Agnes: 50 Years Later.”
I talked to WBAL about those destructive days, discussing the impact of Agnes and how people nearly two generations later remember it in northeastern Maryland. Having taken 21 lives in Maryland, it remains the deadliest named storm in state history.
Captain Mike Dixon at a fire prevention week program at Kenmore Elementary around 1975
OCEAN CITY, June 24, 2022 – At the 130th annual convention of the Maryland State Firemen’s Association (MSFA), I was pleased to be inducted into the MSFA Hall of Fame. This prestigious award recognizes distinguished contributions to the Maryland Fire Service at the state level.
I joined the ranks of the volunteer fire service in 1969. Over the decades, I served as a firefighter, lieutenant, captain, and chief of the EMS Division. Also active in county, state, and national fire service organizations, I edited the Volunteer Trumpet, the statewide newsletter of the MSFA, for nine years.
MSFA Past President John Denver and the Singerly Fire Company nominated me for the special honor. Before the annual convention, a review committee selects a small number of candidates as new members.
I was honored and humbled that my colleagues in the Maryland Fire Service nominated me for this prestigious honor. And during the induction ceremony in Ocean City, as I joined the distinguished ranks of Maryland leaders in the hall of fame, the ceremony evoked many memories from over half a century as a first responder in Maryland.
Elkton Firefighter Mike Dixon doing a fire prevention program at Immaculate Conception School around 1974
Since the nation crossed a grim milestone of one million covid deaths on May 17, 2022, I have been examining how the toll from this pandemic compares to the influenza outbreak of 1918-19 in Harford County.1
COVID-19
According to the Harford County Health Department, the first COVID-19 case was identified in the county on March 8, 2020, and the first virus-related death occurred on April 13, 2020.2,3 Over the next 26-months, the mortality count ticked upward, the disease taking 585 lives as of May 25, 2022. This results in 2.22 COVID-19 deaths per 1,000 people since the county has a population of nearly 263,000.4,5
Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19
One-hundred-four years earlier another mysterious pathogen ripped across Harford County. This time about 29,000 people lived here as reports of puzzling pneumonia cases trickled in slowly in the middle of September 1918. But soon a bewildering cluster of influenza cases hit Aberdeen Proving Ground and Edgewood Arsenal. As the calendar turned to October the contagion spread, taking a deadly toll as it pummeled Harford County.6
The first fatal influenza case involved 33-year-old Hall Wesley Barefoot of Bedford, PA, an electrician on September 24, 1918. He died at Havre de Grace Hospital. The following day, on September 25, Private Joseph Augustus of Fall River MA, 28, a pipefitter at Edgewood Arsenal, died at the base hospital.7,8,9,6
Harford County Deaths 1910 – 1920
Once the pathogen exploded locally, many residents became gravely ill, and an appalling number of deaths occurred. By the end of 1918, Harford County had recorded 474 excess deaths, a 132 percent increase in mortality over the previous six-year average. Another concentrated wave hit in the winter of 1919, as the virus kept Maryland in its clutches. Over that frosty season, the county reported 63 additional excess deaths, an increase of eighteen percent. This metric, excess deaths, measures how many lives were lost beyond what would have been expected.10
Flu Swept Across Harford County
During the time the novel pathogen raged across the county in 1918-19, a rough indicator is that of these 537 excess deaths, the Maryland Board of Health attributed 450 to influenza or pneumonia. This gave the county a virus-related death rate of about 15.5 per 1,000 people and an overall death rate of 28.6 for all causes in 1918 and 14.4 in 1919. For the six-year average before 1918, the annual total mortality rate was 13.411.
Harford County had the second-highest mortality rate per 1,000 in Maryland in 1918, while Anne Arundel County ranked the highest.
County
Total Death per 1,000 in 1918
Anne Arundel
42.7
Harford
28.6
Baltimore City
25.7
Kent
24.1
Talbot
23.3
Cecil
21.8
Incidence Rate — Deaths per 1,000 in Maryland in 1918
Comparison
While it is difficult to estimate the precise toll of the disease over 100-years-ago, the excess deaths above the expected mortality level provide one measure for assessing suddenly shifting health outcomes. The county recorded 537 excess deaths when the population stood at just over 29,000.
Comparing events that occurred more than a century apart has many perils. For example, the population of Harford County in 1918 was about eleven percent of what it is today, meaning that influenza cut a much bigger, lethal swath through the county in a short, concentrated period of a few months. COVID-19 has taken more lives than the influenza pandemic did in terms of the raw mortality count, but the population is far larger.
During three waves of influenza from 1918 to 1919, there were 537 excess and 450 virus-related deaths. Thus far, in 2022, there have been 585 COVID-related losses and the data on excess deaths has not been developed. Also, the COVID numbers continue to tick upward as the pandemic is not over. In 1918-19, the death rate for influenza-related cases was about 15.5 cases per 1,000 people, while the rate for the current pandemic is 2.2.
Measure
1918-19
2020-Present
Excess Deaths
537
TBD
Virus-Related
450
585
Total Deaths
1,275
TBD
Virus-Related Deaths per/1000
15.5
2.2
County Population
29,086
262,977
Estimate of key pandemic metrics for Harford County: Comparing COVID-19 with the flu pandemic of 1918-19
Military Installations
One confounding element for a comparative epidemiological study of 1918-19 in Harford County centers on the establishment of Aberdeen Providing Ground (APG) and Edgewood Arsenal. APG formally opened on December 1, 1917, on some 69,000 acres. At its height during World War I, APG had a population of five thousand military personnel and three thousand civilian workers, according to the Historic Inventory of the Property. Edgewood had around 9,210 personnel.12
Infectious Disease Deaths by Major Location – Harford County – 1918-19
As construction workers and military personnel showed up to hastily build the cantonments, these locations where a mobile population congregated served as an incubator for spreading the contagion throughout rural Harford County. Also, this increase in transient population does not appear to have been included in Maryland Board of Health population estimates.
Most of the 1918-19 deaths in Harford County — 44 percent — occurred at the Government Filling Station (Edgewood Arsenal). Aberdeen Proving Ground accounted for 38-percent of the deaths, with the remaining 18 percent occurring across the county.
Endnotes
Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press, US Deaths from COVID hit 1 million, less than 2 1/2 years in[↩]
Barry Glassman, Press Release, Weekly Update on COVID-19, March 20, 2020[↩]
Barry Glassman, Press Release, Harford’s First Confirmed COVID-19 Death, April 17, 2020[↩]
Johns Hopkins University, COVID-19 Dashboard, Center for Systems Science and Engineering[↩]
