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Two men seen pushing a cart full of raw materials on a railway. In the background, there are crops.
Photograph of Jamaican workers on the Panama Canal.

Black workers on the Panama Canal are assigned to areas with high malaria infection rates.

1903

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Photograph of Jamaican workers on the Panama Canal.

The white American administrators who oversee the construction of the Panama Canal believe that Black people have a "special tolerance" to malaria and are innately less sickened by infection. As such, Black workers are brought from the Caribbean, a region that has very little malaria, and the complete opposite to the racist stereotype proves to be true as the Black workers grow sicker with malaria than many of their white counterparts.