Some Reflections, Growing Out of the Recent Epidemic of Influenza that Afflicted Our City

"'Some Reflections, Growing Out of the Recent Epidemic of Influenza'...we believe its message is relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic." - Racialized Health, COVID-19, and Religious Responses (2022)
"Reverend Francis J. Grimke, an important advocate for African American rights, mused about the meaning of the epidemic...a powerful mandate for racial justice." - American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (2012)
"Reverend Grimke of Washington D.C. found in the epidemic God's efforts to awaken the white community to their sins against their fellow black Americans." - Public Health Reports, Volume 125 (2010)

Did God send pandemics such as the 1918 Influenza (and by extension COVID 19) to teach His stubborn pupils a valuable lesson, such as racial justice?
Reverend Francis J. Grimke, an important advocate for African American rights, answers this question in his short 12-page work published in 1918 under the title, " Some Reflections, Growing Out of the Recent Epidemic of Influenza that Afflicted Our City."

In introducing his book, Grimke writes:

We know now, perhaps, as we have never known before the meaning of the terms pestilence, plague, epidemic, since we have been passing through this terrible scourge of Spanish influenza, with its enormous death rate and its consequent wretchedness and misery. Every part of the land has felt its deadly touchNorth, South, East and Westin the Army, in the Navy, among civilians, among all classes and conditions, rich and poor, high and low, white and black. Over the whole land it has thrown a gloom, and has stricken down such large numbers that it has been difficult to care for them properly, overcrowding all of our hospitalsand it has proven fatal in so many causes that it has been difficult at times to get coffins enough in which to place the dead, and men enough to dig graves fast enough in which to bury them. Our own beautiful city has suffered terribly from it, making it necessary, as a precautionary measure, to close the schools, theaters, churches, and to forbid all public gathering within doors as well as outdoors."

The pandemic that Grimke writes about was the Spanish flu, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or the 1918 influenza pandemic, an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.

About the author:

Francis James Grimké was born October 10, 1850, and died October 11, 1937. He was an American Presbyterian minister in Washington, DC. He was regarded for more than half a century as one of the leading African-American clergy of his era and was prominent in working for equal rights. He was active in the Niagara Movement and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

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