Looking for empirical evidence to justify their claims about black racial inferiority, the Jim Crow era scientific and medical community found that black Americans had higher morbidity and mortality rates for diseases such as cholera, typhoid, dysentery, whooping cough, pneumonia, bronchitis, influenza, malaria, pellagra, acute nephritis, hookworm, and tuberculosis. The poor health conditions among black communities were blamed on race, blood, and genes rather than socioeconomic factors and unequal access to healthcare.