Preview
  • Madness

  • Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum
  • By: Antonia Hylton
  • Narrated by: Antonia Hylton
  • Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (133 ratings)

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Madness

By: Antonia Hylton
Narrated by: Antonia Hylton
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Publisher's summary

In the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a compelling 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation’s last segregated asylums, told by an award-winning journalist on her decade-long search for sanity in America’s mental healthcare system.

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 listeners 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.

©2024 Antonia Hylton (P)2024 Legacy Lit
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What listeners say about Madness

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Historical impact on today

Excellent!! This book uncovers the relationship between crime, mental illness and the need for society to wake up.

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5 people found this helpful

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Madness

I never gave any thought to this subject matter. Enlightening, emotional and devastating. I am in tears.

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6 people found this helpful

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How mental health was viewed for Black Americans back in the day in md

I like the authors voice and the stories that complement the history. A must read!

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1 person found this helpful

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Glad to have added this to my cerebral quarters

By Hands Now Known - Margaret A. Burnham

Death At An Early Age - Jonathan Kozo

Sundown Towns - James W. Loewen

King Leopold's Ghost - Adam Hochschild

Slavery by Another Name - Douglas A Blackmon

News for All the People - Juan Gonzalez & Joseph Torres

They call themselves the KKK - Susan C. Bartoletti

Black Ops Advertising - Mara Einstein

Death of a King - Tavis Smiley & David Ritz

High Price - Dr Carl Hart

Propaganda and the Public Mind - Damian Barsamian & Noam Chomsky

Behold A Pale Horse - Milton William Cooper

Where Do We Go From Here - MLK Jr

White Trash - Nancy Isenberg

The Man-Not - Tommy J. Curry

They Were Her Property - Stephanie Jones-Rogers

White Fragility - Robin DiAngelo

White Rage - Carol Anderson Ph.D

Stamped From The Beginning - Ibram X Kendi

The Half Has Never Been Told - Edward E Baptist

The Great Stain - Noel Rae

The Reckoning - Randall Robinson

The Accident of Color - Daniel Brook

Henry Ford And The Jews - Albert Lee

Beyond These Walls - Anthony M Platt

Sugar - James Walvin

Toussaint L'Ouverture - Phillip Girard

The Destruction of Black Civilization - Chancellor Williams

The Stolen Legacy - George G M James

Media Control - Noam Chomsky

To Be A Slave In Brazil - Katia M de Queiros Mattoso

Superior - Angela Saini

The Color of Law - Richard Rothstein

Red Summer - Cameron McWhirter

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - Walter Rodney

The Crowd - Gustave Le Bon

The Condemnation of Blackness - Khalil Gibran Muhammad

The Empire of Necessity - Greg Grandin

They Came Before Columbus - Ivan Van Sertima

Germany's Black Holocaust - Firpo W Carr Ph.D

The Isis Papers - Dr Frances Cress Welsing

African Origin of Civilization - Cheikh Anta Diop

The Color of Compromise - Jemar Tisby

Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust - John Henrik Clarke

Christianity Before Christ - John G Jackson

Our African Unconscious - Edward Bruce Bynum

Blacked Out Through Whitewash - Dr Suzar Epps

War Against All Puerto Ricans - Nelson A Denis

War Is A Racket - Gen Smedley D Butler

The Delectable Negro - Vincent Woodard

Inhuman Bondage - David Brion Davis

Why Darkness Matters - Edward Bruce Bynum

The Iceman Inheritance - Michael Bradley

Unsettling Truths - Matt Charles & Soong-Chan Rah

Soul On Ice - Eldridge Cleaver

Black Like Me - John Howard Griffin

The Culture of Terrorism - Noam Chomsky

Silencing The Past - Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Faces At The Bottom Of The Well - Derrick Bell

Polaria - W H Muller

A Narco History - Carmen Boullosa & Mike Wallace

Dumbing Us Down - John Taylor Gatto

Across The Tracks - Alverne Bell & Stacey Robinson

The Burning - Tim Madigan

The Age ot Surveillance Capitalism , Shoshana Zuboff

Dirt - Terence P McLaughlin

Wilmington's Lie - David Zucchino

White Malice - Susan Williams

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11 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Riveting story!

Being a Marylander, I am so glad to learn the truth.
The author did a fabulous job not just on her research, composing the story but she is an excellent narrator!

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1 person found this helpful

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The work of an untold story that I had no idea something so horrific existed.

The research that went into this and the families that could find a sliver of relief

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Enlightening!

Great read, very enlightening and informative. The author did a phenomenal job providing context and research on the humans of Crownsville. I'm Sadden that I never learned about the Maryland State Facility.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Should Be Required Reading

I read this for personal learning reasons. I love history and I’m a counselor. Every school counselor school psych school social worker foster care worker and administrator should read this for context. Yes this is a book focused largely on history, But understand that this book is a VERY clear depiction of what has happened in this country to people of color with (or without!) mental health needs, especially children. It is a snippet of what has happened. The beliefs and effects of this do not magically disappear with legislation. The writing, research, organization, and performance make this a five star listen. It does not “read” like a history book. Hylton is a talented historian and writer. This book makes me very proud to be a Black woman in mental health care. The dedication to writing this is UN.MATCHED. Thank you so much for writing this. Thank you thank you thank you

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4 people found this helpful

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Powerful interlacing of a history of mental health and the social context…

…in which mental health care was presented. As a Marylander living 20 minutes from Crownsville I was never aware of the legacy of those grounds. My kids have gone to the Indian Creek School for events and the juxtaposition of one side of Crownsville Road to the other side is an apt metaphor for the context in which that hospital evolved and its place in Maryland history. The story was not only poignant but it gave a human face to the people who worked and were treated at that facility.

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This is must read!

I really don't even know how to describe the importance of this book. For anyone who is involved in health, mental health or the education system this is a must read.

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