The University of South Alabama department of history will present its seventh annual N. Jack Stallworth Lecture featuring Dr. Margaret Humphreys, the Josiah Charles Trent Professor in the History of Medicine at Duke University on Wednesday, Oct. 16 at 7:30 p.m. in the USA John W. Laidlaw Performing Arts Center. This event is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow.

Humphreys, who’s also a professor of history and professor of medicine at Duke University, will lecture on “The South’s Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment and the Civil War.” She will explore the role of disease and the Southern environment during that time in our history.

Humphreys, a Ph.D. and M.D. teaches the history of medicine, public health and biology at Duke University, where she also edits the “Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.” In addition, she has presented lectures at numerous universities, and is the recipient of a Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for tenure at the National Humanities Center.

She is the author of “Yellow Fever and the South,” and “Malaria: Poverty, Race and Public Health in the United States.” Both books explore the tropical disease environment of the American South, and its role in the national public health effort. She is also the author of “Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in American Civil War” followed by “Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War” published in 2013. Both books explore the impact of disease and medical care on troops during the war.

This lecture is named in honor of N. Jack Stallworth, a well-known Mobile businessman, who owned several business ventures and restaurants. Stallworth was instrumental in founding American’s Junior Miss competition, now renamed the Distinguished Young Women Program; the Mobile Chapter of the English Speaking Union; and Camellia Ball. He was a leader of the Mobile Carnival Association and was best known as Mr. Mardi Gras.”

Stallworth’s love for Mobile Southern life and history led him to establish and support the N. Jack Stallworth Lecture in Southern History through the USA department of history and the USA Foundation. He also funded two scholarships in memory of his parents Montgomery Carlton and Minnie Lee Stallworth. Also, the Stallworth family home and contents were left to the USA Foundation to be used to enhance the teaching of Southern history and to support programs at USA.