Black Philadelphians Nurse Yellow Fever Victims, Then Accused of Profiteering

During Philadelphia's 1793 yellow fever epidemic, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen organized the Black community to nurse the sick, bury the dead, and staff hospitals, at great personal risk. Prominent white journalist Mathew Carey then published a pamphlet accusing Black nurses of extorting patients. Jones and Allen responded with their own pamphlet, A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, refuting Carey's charges and documenting their