A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia

Summary

A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia is one of the most important public-health and Black-authored documents of the early United States. Written by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones after the devastating yellow fever epidemic of 1793, it answers Mathew Carey's published accusations that Black Philadelphians profited from disaster or behaved badly during the crisis. Allen and Jones explain that Black residents were called upon to help nurse the sick, remove bodies, carry the dead, clean houses, and perform dangerous labor partly because some white physicians and civic leaders mistakenly believed Black people were less susceptible to yellow fever. That belief proved false. Black caregivers became ill and died, yet their work was slandered. The Narrative is therefore both testimony and rebuttal. It documents public service, describes ingratitude shaped by racial assumptions, names economic exploitation, and insists that Black suffering be counted. The medical lens is exceptionally high. The pamphlet shows epidemic labor, nursing, corpse handling, contagion theory, racialized immunity myths, unequal risk, public memory, and the moral politics of gratitude. It also belongs to the history of Black church leadership, because Allen and Jones write as religious and civic authorities defending their community's truth. Historically, the epidemic struck Philadelphia when it was the national capital, terrifying the city and testing republican ideals. Benjamin Rush's medical role, including his controversial treatments, forms part of the background. Read beside Rush, the pamphlet shifts attention from heroic physician to exposed caregiver. Read beside Defoe's plague narrative, it makes epidemic literature a matter of race, labor, and public accusation. Its enduring force lies in the clarity of its claim: those asked to bear danger should not be blamed or left out of the public record. That claim remains central to medical ethics after every epidemic and public emergency.

Plot or Argument

• A public accusation demands answer

  Allen and Jones respond to printed claims that Black residents exploited the epidemic rather than serving the city.

• Care work is counted as testimony

  The pamphlet describes nursing, cleaning, transport, burial, and other dangerous labor performed during the fever.

• False immunity becomes deadly policy

  The belief that Black people were protected from yellow fever helped expose them to risk and later slander.

Characters

• Richard Allen, coauthor and minister

  Black Methodist leader who defended his community's conduct and later founded the AME Church.

• Absalom Jones, coauthor and minister

  Black Episcopal leader who coauthored the pamphlet and served Philadelphia's Black community.

• Mathew Carey, accuser answered by the pamphlet

  Publisher whose account of the epidemic included accusations against Black Philadelphians.

Lessons

• Epidemic memory is contested

  Allen and Jones show that after a disaster, the story of who served and who failed becomes a moral battleground. Public health history includes arguments over memory and credit.

  • Why did Allen and Jones need to answer Carey publicly?
  • Who gets remembered as a helper during epidemics?

• Racial myths can allocate risk

  The false belief in Black immunity shaped who was asked to perform dangerous labor. Bad medical ideas can become systems for distributing exposure.

  • How did immunity myth become social policy?
  • What modern health myths allocate risk unfairly?

• Care labor deserves testimony

  The pamphlet dignifies nursing, cleaning, carrying, and burial as civic service. It asks readers to count the labor that official narratives often treat as invisible.

  • Why is care work easy to erase?
  • How does testimony become a form of justice?

Context

The 1793 yellow fever epidemic devastated Philadelphia, then the national capital. Medical uncertainty, flight, fear, and racialized assumptions shaped the response.

Composition

Allen and Jones published the pamphlet in 1794 to correct Mathew Carey's account and defend Black Philadelphians' service during the epidemic.

Reception

The Narrative is now valued as an early Black-authored public-health text and a crucial document in the history of race, epidemic labor, and Philadelphia's Black churches.

Comparisons

• medical-inquiries-and-observations-upon-diseases-of-the-mind

  Rush represents elite medical authority in Philadelphia; Allen and Jones center Black caregivers exposed by epidemic practice and racial myth.

• early-black-church-sermons

  The pamphlet anticipates Black church public witness, where religious leadership speaks for civic justice and communal memory.

• A Journal of the Plague Year (Daniel Defoe)

  Defoe's plague narrative studies urban epidemic fear; Allen and Jones add race, labor, and public rebuttal to epidemic literature.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening account of how the call for help came: Black Philadelphians were asked through public appeals to nurse the sick and bury the dead, in part because physicians believed they could not catch the fever. Watch what Allen and Jones say happened once they answered.
• The specific names and cases the authors set down, such as poor Black women who nursed white families and received nothing, set against the charges of extortion in Mathew Carey's account.
• The authors' careful accounting of their own costs, including what they paid out for hired help and burials compared with what they received. Notice how they use numbers as moral evidence.
• The admission that some Black nurses did charge high prices or behaved badly, and how Allen and Jones answer it by pointing out that white nurses did the same and that the work was deadly.
• The short addresses printed at the end, to those who keep slaves and to the people of colour, where the pamphlet turns from defending the past to exhorting both groups for the future.

Key terms and names

Yellow fever

The epidemic disease that struck Philadelphia from August to November 1793 and killed roughly a tenth of the city. Its cause, a mosquito-borne virus, was unknown at the time.

Mathew Carey

The Philadelphia publisher whose Short Account of the Malignant Fever accused some Black nurses of extortion and theft. Allen and Jones wrote their Narrative to answer him.

Benjamin Rush

The leading Philadelphia physician who asked Allen and Jones for help and taught them to bleed and purge patients according to his method. They worked under his direction through the epidemic.

Free African Society

The mutual-aid and religious society founded in 1787 by Allen and Jones. Its members formed the core of the Black volunteers who nursed and buried during the fever.

Immunity myth

The belief, held by Rush and others at the start of the epidemic, that people of African descent were not susceptible to the fever. Allen and Jones report that many Black caregivers sickened and died.

Bethel and St Thomas

The churches Allen and Jones went on to lead: Bethel, the mother church of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and St Thomas African Episcopal Church. Their authority as churchmen stands behind the pamphlet.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why were Black Philadelphians asked to nurse the sick and bury the dead in 1793, and what did Allen and Jones and their society agree to do?
2. Comprehension What did Mathew Carey's account claim about Black nurses, and what specific evidence do Allen and Jones offer in reply?
3. Comprehension According to the authors, what did their work during the epidemic cost them, and what were they paid?
4. Interpretation Allen and Jones admit that some Black nurses overcharged. Why does this admission make their defense stronger rather than weaker?
5. Interpretation Why do the authors name individual nurses and give figures for money spent, instead of relying only on general claims of good service?
6. Interpretation How does the pamphlet's tone balance grievance against Carey with charity toward the city that slandered them? What does that balance suggest about the authors' purpose?
7. Big Question What do the people of a city owe to those who risked their lives for it in a disaster, and is gratitude a duty of justice or only of kindness?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 25:35-40 (Scripture)

  Christ counts care for the sick and the stranger as care given to himself. Allen and Jones present their nursing of the sick and burial of the dead as Christian service, which is why the charge that they did it for gain wounded so deeply.

• Luke 10:25-37 (Scripture)

  In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the man despised by the injured man's own people is the one who stops to help him. The pamphlet records a similar scene in Philadelphia, where many who fled the city were later quick to judge those who stayed.

• Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History VII.22 (Church Fathers)

  Eusebius preserves a letter of Dionysius of Alexandria describing a third-century plague in which Christians nursed the sick and buried the dead at the cost of their own lives, while many pagans fled. Allen and Jones stand in this long Christian tradition of staying with the sick.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Black Philadelphians were asked to nurse and bury in the epidemic on the false belief that they were safe from the fever. They answered, many served without pay or at a loss, and many sickened and died. Where some charged high prices, white nurses did the same, and the danger of the work explains the price. Carey's account singles out Black nurses for blame while passing over their sacrifice. Therefore his charge is unjust, and the public record should honor the service of the Black community.

Rhetorical device: concession (concessio). Allen and Jones grant that some Black nurses took advantage of the crisis before showing that the same was true of some white nurses and that most of their people served at great risk for little or nothing. By conceding the narrow point, they win credibility for the larger defense.

Debate: Resolved: Allen and Jones were right to answer Mathew Carey publicly rather than let their service speak for itself.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Allen and Jones defend their community against a published accusation. Analyze how they build their case through named examples, financial accounts, and concessions, and argue which of these strategies does the most to answer Mathew Carey.

Comparison with The History of the Church: Eusebius preserves Dionysius of Alexandria's account of Christians nursing the sick in a third-century plague, and Allen and Jones record Black Christians nursing in the Philadelphia fever of 1793. Compare how each text presents care for the sick as a witness to faith, and argue why the Philadelphia authors needed to defend their service in a way Dionysius did not.

Medical Lens

This is a major medical-history text: it documents yellow fever, racialized immunity myths, nursing labor, corpse handling, sanitation, and the ethics of public memory after epidemic service.

• Defense of Black caregivers

  Allen and Jones describe dangerous care work performed by Black residents during the epidemic.

  Nursing CaregivingFever Infection
• Response to accusations and immunity assumptions

  The pamphlet exposes how false medical claims about race shaped risk and blame.

  Medical EthicsPlague Epidemic

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Read Allen and Jones as public-health witnesses correcting an unjust epidemic narrative.

• Dialogue

  Have Allen and Jones question a modern hospital administrator about risk, gratitude, and invisible labor.

Further Reading