The name of a Harvard University lecture called to first-year student Antonia Hylton: “Madness in Medicine.” The 2011 lecture delved into the development of modern psychiatry.
Hylton said that, immediately “hooked” on the topic as she continued her studies in history and science, she noticed that Black people were absent in the historical accounts she read about mental illness.
Determined to learn more, Hylton embarked on an independent exploration that led her on a decadelong mission, combing through often obscure archival research and collecting oral histories from the surviving patients and employees of mental health facilities.
Along the way, Hylton unearthed the stories of some of her own family members whose lived experiences with mental trauma had caused generational stigma and shame.
Those true-life tales are rigorously reported and tightly interwoven in Hylton’s first book, “Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum” (Legacy Lit/Hachette Book Group), published Tuesday. Hylton is a correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC.
In its 368 pages, the story of Crownsville Hospital — formerly known as the Maryland Hospital for the Negro Insane — unfolds.
“Madness” takes readers back to a cold day in March 1911, when officials marched a dozen Black men into the heart of a Maryland forest. The men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the hospital’s first 12 patients.
As it evolved from a work camp into what was practically a small city set on 1,500 acres, the infamous institution became a microcosm of battles over slavery, racial integration and civil rights. At its peak, the hospital’s population overflowed with 2,700 patients.
The institution shuttered in 2004; the remaining records documenting the sprawling campus and its patients “tell us a uniquely American story,” Hylton writes.
NBC News recently spoke with Hylton via Zoom….
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