Antonia Hylton discusses her book, Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum. Ms. Hylton’s extensive research into Crownsville Hospital in Maryland, a segregated asylum that was both hospital and prison, serves as physical example of racist systems and black resistance. Tracing the history of Crownsville was difficult since so many of the official records were destroyed and those that remained were in rough shape. She turned to oral history of those nurses and staff that worked there to describe the community that formed under the oppressive systems of white supremacy within Crownsville. Built by the very patients it was meant to treat, underfunded by the state, and neglected by the medical establishment, the patients and staff of Crownsville serve as an example of hope in the face of neglect and kindness in the shadow of fear.
Antonia Hylton, a Peabody and two-time Emmy award-winning Correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, on her book, Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum.