Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

Madness is a book that looks at the nearly century-long history of one of the last segregated asylums with records and a building structure that still exist. Journalist Antonia Hylton documents the testimonials and anecdotes of patients and employees of this mental asylum through investigative research. It tells a story of mental illness, the lasting evidence of racism among what was supposed to be a place of healing — where there was a longstanding lack of safety and dignity towards those being treated. It dovetails into how asylums like this faded as the carceral system started being where many Black Americans were then funneled into for mental health problems. From the treatment of Blacks during slavery to our current mental health system, Hylton traces the threads of injustice ending by weaving a historical account that shows how America has decided who is sick and who is criminal as well as unjustly discriminating between who is worthy of care and who is deemed irredeemable.