The number of still births is greater among colored than whites. This is due to many causes. Among them exposure of the mother, poor living, and lack of attention during the period of gestation.
Huntsville, situated in Northern Alabama, is renowned as a healthful place. The colored people thereabouts are in fair circumstances. The death rate for the part of the year 1887 to November 1, reveals a startling disparity between the races: There were 42 deaths among the whites and 98 among the colored; 4 whites and 13 colored died of consumption; still born, 1 white and 6 colored. The colored death rate is 39 per 1000, allowing the colored population to be 3000. But it must be remembered that the winter of 1886-7 was the severest for nearly a half century.
"But the greatest disparity in the death rates of the two races is the number of deaths under five years. Here there is, indeed, in the negro race, a woful 'slaughter of the innocents.' The death rate of Negro children is always more than double that of the white, and from that to even four times as great." May not the unskillful midwife have much of this laid at her door?
A well informed writer says: "More than half of the deaths under five years among Negro children, is caused by trismus nascentium.[A] To well-meaning but ignorant old women can be laid this 'slaughter in hecatombs' of children. Unwholesome food also has much to do with the deaths of infants and children, especially in summer. There is a woful need of training schools to educate nurses, and similar institutions throughout the South. Skilled female physicians (colored) are peculiarly fitted for lessening this infant mortality."
Another strange thing with regard to Negro statistics is, that more women than men become nonagenarians. With the whites it is the reverse; more single males than single females die; more widows than widowers die; more females than males die of consumption; more males than females die of pneumonia. The cause of some of these facts is plain.
Only one Negro in 1,037 becomes insane, while one in every 434 whites, according to good authority.
A writer in The Sanitarian for June, 1887, says that many deaths among the Negroes are caused by indifference to personal cleanliness and medical attention—many dying without applying for medical aid. The same writer gives the following:
"In the following table is given the total death-rate per 1000, and also the death-rate under five years of age, in Charleston, S. C., Savannah, Ga., Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., for the years 1883-85. The upper figures give the white rate and the next the colored:
| Charleston. | Memphis. | Nashville. | Savannah. | |
| 1883. | 21.60 | 15.19 | 18.68 | 20.47 |
| 47.13 | 35.83 | 31.29 | 39.57 | |
| 1884. | 23.68 | 18.80 | 16.77 | 19.54 |
| 44.63 | 41.66 | 26.94 | 42.21 | |
| 1885. | 17.64 | 16.56 | 14.69 | 12.9 |
| 38.49 | 36.96 | 27.07 | 34.4 | |
| Rate of deaths under five years: | ||||
| Charleston. | Memphis. | Nashville. | Savannah. | |
| 1883. | 5.88 | 3.75 | 5.65 | 7.59 |
| 21.03 | 13.91 | 12.44 | 18.01 | |
| 1884. | 6.48 | 4.47 | 5.46 | 6.54 |
| 16.52 | 15.63 | 11.55 | 16.68 | |
| 1885. | 4.45 | 4.67 | 4.37 | 4.23 |
| 14.38 | 13.46 | 10.78 | 13.70 | |
"The per cent. of increase for the total population from 1870 to 1880 was 30.08—white, 29.30; black, 34.67. To show the relative increase between the two races at the South, I take from the last official census the three Southern States—Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi—which may be accepted as a fair criterion for the rest of the South. Rate of increase in these, taken as one State—white, 23.90; black, 33 per cent. It is still more apparent, in South Carolina, because it is less affected by immigration from other States, and shows more accurately the natural increase. There it is 45.33 for the blacks, and for the white population, 35 per cent."