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Prisoners, black and white, across the Deep South of the USA were aware of Joseph Goldberger’s experiments, which were designed to find the cause of pellagra by assessing and modifying the diets of prisoners at Rankin Prison Farm, Mississippi. The archives of the State of Mississippi hold evidence of the extensive public controversy, involving outraged victims of the crimes of these inmates, the general public and Governor Brewer, who had sanctioned Goldberger’s experiment and the offer of pardon to the volunteers. In the early 1900s, pellagra affected an estimated 50,000 people in the southern USA and killed 7000 poor blacks and whites. Goldberger believed that pellagra was caused by a dietary deficiency, not by an infection, as was widely believed. He was so strong in this belief that he had tested the hypothesis on himself, his wife and other members of the American public health service. To test the assumed infectiousness of pellagra, they had variously inoculated themselves with skin squames and nasal secretions and eaten faeces from pellagrins. Goldberger’s experiments feeding volunteer prisoners cornbread, fat meat and black molasses induced pellagra, which was alleviated by variations including peas, beans, cabbage greens and wheat bread. By 1926, Goldberger proposed yeast extract supplements to combat the disease and arranged distribution through the Red Cross Stores that were supplying food handouts, canned grapefruit juice (vitamin C – in Champion Jack Dupree’s Warehouseman Blues), clothes and blankets. This dietary support did reduce the frequency of pellagra. However, poor blacks felt stigmatized by handouts and the Red Cross Stores themselves carried a bitter reputation. Oliver describes how, after the great floods of 1927, ‘Negroes who entered the Red Cross food stations were seized and put into forced labour. Negro refugees under armed guards did the entire work on the Vicksburg levees and the treatment of the suffering homeless people was less than human.’ Many did not return from this latter-day slavery. Many collapsed exhausted, to be buried in the earth mounds of the great river – hence, in Red Cross Store Blues, Alabama Sam sings:

Pellagra and the blues song ‘Cornbread, meat and black molasses’