12 DttP: Documents to the People Spring 2021 FEATURE In 2020, a pandemic of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus struck worldwide, rapidly becoming the most devastating since the 1918 global infuenza pandemic. As librarians confronted entirely new challenges in how to safely manage libraries during the COVID-19 crisis, a common question was, “what happened in libraries during the 1918 infuenza pandemic?” Tis article explores that question through the lens of government documents and news articles of the 1918-1921 time period, seeking to understand what happened then in libraries nationwide, and what we might learn from it today. “T hief River Falls and Moorhead Hit by ‘Enzy,’ ” a news arti- cle in the Duluth News Tribune in Duluth, Minnesota announced on October 10, 1918. 1 With 150 cases of infuenza and two deaths reported locally, the board of health stepped in to close the public library as well as all public schools, theaters and churches. For many libraries nationwide, October 1918 was the frst crisis point in the infuenza epidemic. A wave of clo- sures nationwide included libraries in Asheville, North Carolina (October 5); Olympia, Washington (October 7); Tulsa, Okla- homa, Pueblo, Colorado, and Lexington, Kentucky (October 8); Grand Forks, North Dakota, Redwood City, California and Belleville, Illinois (October 10); Los Gatos, California (October 11); Fort Wayne, Indiana, Mountain View, California and Ber- ryessa, California (October 12); Albany, Oregon (October 17); and San Francisco, California (October 18). 2 Te infuenza epidemic of 1918 frst hit the United States in March 1918 at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas. 3 A year earlier, the United States had entered World War I with declara- tions of war against Germany and Austria-Hungary following President Woodrow Wilson’s speech to a joint session of Con- gress on April 2, 1917. 4 Te 1918 pandemic’s frst wave in the US thus hit young men crowded into barracks in World War I training camps, and spread onward to local civilians. Testify- ing at a September 28, 1918 US Senate hearing, US Surgeon General Rupert Blue reported, “35 States have been invaded by the disease,” specifcally naming Alabama, Arkansas, Cali- fornia, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mary- land, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Mis- souri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washing- ton, and West Virginia, and also describing an “epidemic” level of infuenza outbreak in localities including Florence, Alabama; Lonoke County in Arkansas; Key West, Florida; Portland, Maine; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Raleigh and Wilming- ton, North Carolina; and Portsmouth and Norfolk, Virginia. 5 At Boston, Massachusetts, the Surgeon General reported 618 deaths from infuenza and 197 deaths from pneumonia occur- ring within just the ten-day period of September 16 to Septem- ber 26, 2018. 6 Te hearing also included an article from the Department of the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, describing how the disease progressed with onset of chills, severe headache, and body aches, or at times beginning with nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain, and an early onset of fever, frequently with a later onset of “a bad cold in the head with raw throat and dry cough.” 7 Testifying about his experience in the US Navy Medi- cal Corps, Lt. Commander J. R. Phelps noted that the infu- enza peaked from the eighth to the twelfth day, after which reporting of pneumonia occurred, followed by deaths coming in and increasing from the ffteenth to the twentieth days, with a forty day cycle overall. 8 Closing the Libraries Many communities around the country already knew about the infuenza outbreak before it reached their own areas. For example, in Palm Beach, Florida, on September 27, 1918, the local newspaper reported on 6,139 new cases of infuenza and 723 new cases of pneumonia in the military deployment camps, The Fight Against Enzy US Libraries During the Infuenza Epidemic of 1918 Lorri Mon