Also stealing this line from another friend of the museum, doctor, dr. Nyberg. Potentially, there is only one thing you can learn from the world war. That thing would be dont forget to get your flu shot. [laughter] so, ladies and gentlemen, do remember that, also, we did get the wonderful thing called daylight savings time because of world war i in the United States and other countries around the world. Also, a nice little psa. Do not forget saturday into sunday, we will fall back and you get one extra hour of sleep. Maybe it means you get to enjoy even hardier this evenings dinner. Now, i am so pleased to introduce our next speaker. Dr. Nancy bristow is a distinguished professor of history at the university of puget sound where she specializes in 20th century American History with an emphasis on race, gender, and social change, and serves on the Leadership Team of the race and pedagogy institute. She is the author of 1996 is social engineering and the great war and 2012s american pandemic the lost world of the 1918 influenza epidemic, whose content she will be addressing this afternoon. You might have seen her on the American Express great war. Her most recent research will be published as seeped in the blood of racism, black power law an order. And the 1917 shootings in jackson college. Which will be coming out in may of 2020 by Oxford University press. To find out more about this very pressing issue, please put your hands together and welcome dr. Bristow to the stage. [applause] dr. Bristow thank you so much. Thank you so much. It is an absolute pleasure to be here. I am so grateful to the museum, to camille, to laura, to all of you, to the tech people for making this a stupendous event and before i get started today, i have one favor to ask of the audience. I am skipping school today. I need to let them know i really was somewhere doing something. If you all could give me a smile, wave, and say hey there scholar. A few photos. That was it. Awesome. Let me get to work. On june 6, 1918, in north dakota, lillians mother gave birth to a little girl. Unfortunately, five months later on november 12, her mother passed away. She had contracted influenza and died a few days later. In these days, it was not proper for a man to raise his daughters alone. So lillians older sister was farmed out to relatives where she lived. Lillian unfortunately was traded from Family Member to Family Member for two years. Finally, she was able to settle in with relatives living in the same town as the father as she got to see him regularly through her childhood. When i interviewed her 85 years later, she still maintained influenza killed her mother changed her life completely. It had to, she suggested. Experts today estimate as many as 1 3 of human beings on the globe suffered from this new incarnation of influenza incorrectly dubbed by contemporaries spanish influenza. Striking with unprecedented ferocity, the pandemic caused no fewer than 50 million deaths. It attacked in four waves. First, coming through in the spring, and then, unfortunately coming back in a second wave that was much more deadly. During that second wave, infection rates in the United States ranged between 25 and 40 . And some 675,000 americans perished. Thats more than half a million that would have died, even in those days, of annual flu. Lillians mother was one of the victims. The pandemic did not end in 1918. There was a third wave early in the spring of 1919. In either the first annual version of this new virus or a fourth wave came through in early 1920. You can imagine the kind of disruption this must have been in a world just coming off of the great war , and that has already suffered through the pandemic of the fall of 1918. Interestingly, it has long been an article of faith among historians that this was americas forgotten pandemic as he would suggest in his landmark study of the pandemic. On one level it is true. In the aftermath of the pandemic, there were few monuments built, literally a handful in the country. Sed withoutes pas memorialization. Very few people spoke of it publicly. And yet, lillians recollection suggests this idea of a completely forgotten pandemic is missing part of the story. Because this clear people did remember the pandemic as individuals in their personal and private wives. What i want to do today is complicate this idea of national amnesia. Here is the plan for the day. Im going to set some context by explaining what the pandemic was, the impact it was having, but then i want to turn to the issue of it being remembered in the way people remembered it as a really traumatic story. Then i will turn to the other part of it, the ways in which in the public culture we were able to forget this terrible event, and talk about the process by which that happened. I will close with a few remarks about the costs of forgetting. Scholars continue to disagree about the origins of the pandemic. Pardon me. But many will maintain that it started here in kansas. There was a virus, it made its way into the Army Barracks and would travel out and across the United States where it would travel on to the western front. The terrible thing that happens on the western front is you have a lot of people in difficult circumstances and a great opportunity for the virus to continue to mutate, to go through what we call genetic shift. That is exactly what took place. The pandemic would come back in late august and arrive suddenly in three locations on almost the same day in france, the United States, and in sierra leone, africa. This would be the third wave. It landed in boston in august. By the end of october, the entire United States would be drowning in a sea of disease from buffalo to birmingham, from dayton to los angeles. This new incarnation of influenza was different. At first, they tried to pass it off as they had when the first wave came through in the spring as this is just regular seasonal flu. But when it came back in october, in september and october, it was clear this was something that bore only scant resemblance to the traditional, if feared, nevertheless flu. , one way it was different was the pace at which it spread. It arrived in boston in late august on the 27th. By the end of october, it covered the entire nation. In fact, it had done the same thing worldwide. It also struck with unexpected virulence in terms of mortality rates. It had in infection rate generally across the United States of 20 . Endsan see what this meant up meaning for u. S. Life expectancy. A morbidity of 28 . Mortality rate of 2. 5 . It was enough to lower Life Expectancy in 1918 by 12 years. At a time in which people were beginning to imagine the end of Infectious Disease and seeing Life Expectancy on an upward trajectory, this was a terrible shock. Another thing that made this shocking and disruptive was who was sickening and dying. Traditionally, with influenza we have a ushaped mortality chart. It takes most of its victims, even as it does today, among the very young and very old. In 1918, instead, we have a w. What that suggests is that 50 of the victims were taken from those in the prime of their lives. Think about who that is. We are talking about young parents. We are talking about School Teachers and nurses and firefighters and perhaps city council members. We are talking about the people who keep a society running and keep families running. But it was not only this pattern of infection. The other thing that made this horrifying for people was the symptoms. Here i want to describe them just briefly. I apologize because it is not a pretty picture, but i think we need to really understand what it was that people had to live through, given that most people suffered through illness at home and the caregivers were primarily Family Members. At its beginnings would just be the flu. We know how unpleasant the flu can be. Aches, fever, cold like symptoms. About 1 5 suffered only that. For others, the problem was spanish influenza. They would face high fevers, disabling headaches, pain in the joints and muscles that was extreme, leading to physical frustration and edema in the lungs. For some, these symptoms might pass. But for others, it got worse. Delirium and unconsciousness would often follow as the lungs filled the with the immune response would create a feeling of the lungs with the bodily fluids of the patients leading to discoloration of hands and feet and face. Sort of a blue and purplish color. And then often, finally, bloody fluids would drain from the orifices. Some people would get sick and die as quick as a day. Usually was more like three or four days. Some people might suffer through this 10 days or two weeks. Others faced what at first appeared to be just traditional influenza, would appear to be healing, then would face bacterial pneumonia. Something for which in 1918 we still do not have antibiotic cures. During the worst weeks of the pandemic, of course, cities and towns would attempt to control the pandemic. They would be trying to prevent the spread and keep as many people healthy as possible, even as they are trying to take care of the sick and handle the growing number of the dead. For this, kansas city can stand as a typical story of what this process might look like in the kinds of things taking place. In kansas city, as most places nationwide, influenza arrived by way of an army camp. There were two army motor schools near the city and thats where influenza first emerged. City leaders including Public Health officials tried to calm the public and suggested do not worry, civilians will be fine. Of course, that was not true, just as it was not true anywhere else in the country. By late september, the army was completely quarantined. Something like 1000 people were already down with the illness. The Kansas City Department of health continued to downplay the risks until they could not any longer. On october 7, it was clear there was a Major Health Emergency taking place. They closed schools, churches, theaters. They banned public gatherings of any group larger than 20. That figure is important to notice because that meant you could keep some things open. You could keep saloons and dance halls open, as long as you did not have more than 20 people in any given space. You could keep those open, and they did. Unfortunately, there was infighting among the Public Health folks in kansas city. Shortly after they put the restrictions in place, they were removed. Influenza worsened and quickly they had to restore reimpose these restrictions. This time, they were tighter. Dances, parties, weddings, funerals. Business hours were shortened. All known cases of influenza were required to be quarantined. Citizens strained under these restrictions for a full month. Hard to picture doing that today. Schools simply closed for an entire month. Unfortunately, that was not long enough. They reopened the schools on november 18 but had acted too quickly and again influenza spread, and this time especially among the very School Children who had returned. By the end of the year, the second wave was largely passed. That did not mean influenza was gone. In fact, in january and february, morbidity skyrocketed again. In some ways, people suggested this was as bad as been before. It was so severe that people could wake up healthy and be dead by nightfall. But no further measures were taken. The Community Moved on. It would not sit for those restrictions i talked about in october. Public attention moved on to recovery from the pandemic and to a future after the war. When the pandemic came to a close, the city suffered 11,000 cases and 2300 influenza deaths, one of the higher rates nationwide. Up to this point, ive been talking about influenza, spanish influenza, something distinct and different from anything before. In terms of an illness, it was. In one way, it was not different. It is important to note this, as as we are thinking about the experience that people went through. What did not change was social and cultural norms, and their imposition and shaping of americans lives over the course of the pandemic. Let me explain what i mean. In an age of strict adherence to gender roles, the loss of one parent could plunge a family into disarray. Remember lillians father, who was not sanctioned to raise his own children. It was complicated when the mother would be surviving and the father would pass away because in these days, men were often the primary breadwinner. Especially for middle class or upper class families. This would leave families in complete economic disarray. As one red cross worker in kentucky explained, a large number of cases were reported where the mother was left with a large family of children with no means of support. Left to the mercy of the meager assistance sympathetic neighbors might give. In some cases, it was solved by a womans transition to the workplace. Or by a child heading to work. But for the poorest families, the basic problems of the epidemic were worsened by material need. With no financial cushion, lost wages for a short time could mean hunger, could mean cold, could mean homelessness. The poor were generally forced to rely on charity because we have no meaningful social safety net. They would often run into a system of surveillance and a system of judgment that punished them for their poverty. For people of color, the circumstances were more difficult. Their experiences framed by the disadvantages of rachel prejudiceis racial and are drawn by poverty they produce. Again, an example to illustrate. A 14yearold contracted influenza at the Indian School in salem, oregon. She was there, she had been placed there by her reservation in california and had had a clear physical exam when she arrived. But these schools where a breeding place for sickness. In the months preceding the epidemic you could see that students were wrestling with everything from chickenpox the tonsillitis to a stiff neck, which makes you worry. Problems with their feet. On other pages you find pulmonary problems, stomach problems, eye troubles. These were unhealthy places. She contracted influenza there, as did many, many other students. This was the latest example of the sickening of the Indigenous Peoples of the United States through the spread of disease. A long, long story in our history. Africanamericans, alternatively, face the the persistence of White Supremacy and its Practical Application in the system of segregation. Hospitals often remained barred to African Americans and their caregivers. It was usually the black community that made things happen. In richmond, virginia, the city did open a Public Hospital for all residents of richmond. There is a catch. African americans could only gain treatment in the basement. Here in kansas city, there was actually a very special place, General Hospital number two, which was opened in 1908, and was the first hospital serving the black community entirely peopled by and run by africanamericans. But it was also a segregated , facility that was outmoded, overcrowded and ill maintained. My point here is that social identity mattered during the pandemic. It was not changed. In the midst of disruption, especially those with social power, maintaining the way things were done, including the social hierarchy was a means of maintaining a sense of normalcy. The cost of that was severe for some. Put simply, the violence was untrained in american prejudice, but the American Public was not. Let me turn to the aftermath and talk about how this trauma lived on. I would suggest again that, at the level of the individual, the trauma does not simply dissipate, but continues to frame lives, perhaps for their entirety. What a strange is how notoriously difficult it is to find resources of people writing, talking and singing about the flu. This is part of the idea of it having been forgotten as part of public life. There are, however, a few very rich sources to tell us the experiences of those who have suffered. My favorite is katherine porter. If you have not read it, i recommend this as one wonderful way, alongside the lovely novella about the pandemic. Katherine porter she was writing as a Young Journalist at the Rocky Mountain news in denver when she became sick with influenza. She was sick enough that the paper would not run it but would have written her obituary. But she did pull through. And later, more than a decade later, she would write about what had taken place. When she recovered from her illness, by the way, she learned she had lost her fiancee. Her novella is very autobiographical. It focuses on the young character named miranda and a 24yearold woman, and follows her romance with a young soldier named adam and her struggle with influenza. As she submerges maranda into the illness, she reveals the fear the disease sometimes prompted. She says, the character, i am in pain all over and you are in such dangers i cannot bear to think about. And she and her boyfriend adam wonder together why they cannot save each other. When adam is taking care of miranda, they talk about what each had meant to do as if their deaths were preordained. She gives a sense of the peace and the terror, the coherence and confusion she passed through as a patient. And perhaps a warning of how painful her life in the aftermath would be, her character miranda does not seem to fear death but instead finds comfort in it, tranquility and joy in its approach. But death is not to be hers. Porter portrays vividly the malaise and depression from which influenza victims suffered in the aftermath. Miranda struggles to rejoin the living, longing for the heaven of her dream. Her desolation is not only the illness she is recovering from but the loss of adam. Whose death she experiences as a cruel trick. The novella ends with ironic declaration of the promise of the future. She writes, no more war, no more plague, only the