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Image for event: Book Discussion: "Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum" by Antonia Hylton

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Book Discussion: "Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum" by Antonia Hylton

2025-02-18 18:30:00 2025-02-18 20:00:00 America/New_York Book Discussion: "Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum" by Antonia Hylton Join a lively discussion! This month we are discussing "Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum" by Antonia Hylton. Virtual Branch - PGCMLS Programming

Tuesday, February 18
6:30pm - 8:00pm

Add to Calendar 2025-02-18 18:30:00 2025-02-18 20:00:00 America/New_York Book Discussion: "Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum" by Antonia Hylton Join a lively discussion! This month we are discussing "Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum" by Antonia Hylton. Virtual Branch - PGCMLS Programming

Virtual Branch

PGCMLS Programming

Join a lively discussion! This month we are discussing "Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum" by Antonia Hylton.

"On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state's Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. "Madness" transports readers behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum. In "Madness," Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. "Madness" chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family's experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations. As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America's evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital's wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America's new focus. In "Madness," Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people's bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable."

—From Catalog.


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About the branch

The virtual branch of the library is available 24/7 to PGCMLS cardholders. Please visit our Online Resources page to gain access to many worthwhile resources or attend one of our many virtual events by visiting pgcmls.info/events.

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