replacements for bedding, as well as household items. 131 Reverend P.F. Ransom of Butler Street Baptist Church stated that congregants would help provide temporary housing and clothing. 132 The lack of municipal infrastructure investment in the neighborhood resulted in the tragic loss of life. Buttermilk Bottom did not have a sewer system; the residents had outhouses and shared a water spicket. Dwellers in neighborhoods deemed ‘slums’ by city elites, used the solution they knew best. “[T]hey dug a pit and built an outhouse over it." 133 Outhouses were inadequate to prevent the spread of an epidemic. Additionally, these residents dug their wells and carried water for their household needs. 134 Open sewers in areas deemed "slums" helped to cultivate the spread of diseases like typhoid fever and claimed lives. Another unfortunate intersection was the lack of recreational facilities and the presence of open sewers, creating a dual environmental injustice. The toxic and noxious odors were pervasive, and children who often played by the sewers, tragically lost their lives drowning in them. One child, Willie Otis Butler who lived in Carver Homes, died trying to get tires out of the sewer to play with. 135 Another child, Jerome Newson fell into the shallow end of the open sewer and contracted “some kind of fever”, recounted his father, Joe Newson. His son, Jerome, received care for the fever at Grady Hospital. 136 Residents complained both about “the stench from the sewer and the hazardous situation of the open sewers” to the Atlanta Housing Authority, who instead of removing the waste, allowed for water to become stagnant and become “deep pools” in some places. 137 The lack of a modern, connected water and sewage system throughout the city, including areas outside of the "sanitation districts," such as Buttermilk Bottom and Carver Homes, caused high death rates from typhoid fever. In 1900, 1,766 people died from typhoid fever. That year, 17,000 people were affected by the epidemic, making it the fifth leading cause of death in Georgia. 138 Conditions stemming from open sewers undergirded the push for demolition and the clearing of low-cost housing, which was occupied by both poverty-stricken and working-class Black and White people, to protect the interests of elite White individuals and the business community.
131 Harmon, “Flood Victims.” 132 Harmon, “Flood Victims.” 133 Skye Borden, Thirsty City: Politics, Greed, and the Making of Atlanta’s Water Crisis. (New York: State University of New York Press, 2014), 31.
134 Borden, Thirsty City, 31.
135 “Boy Drowns in Sewer In Carver Vicinity,” Atlanta Daily World
136 “Boy Drowns.”
137 “Boy Drowns.”
138 Thomas Franklin Abercrombie, “History of Public Health in Georgia: 1733- 1950.” (Georgia, Georgia Department of Health, 1950/ 1959), 65. https://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/data/dlg/ggpd/pdfs/dlg_ggpd_s-ga-bh700-b-pm1-b1953- bp8.pdf
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