Madness Audiobook By Antonia Hylton cover art

Madness

Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

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Madness

By: Antonia Hylton
Narrated by: Antonia Hylton
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About this listen

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
Black & African American History Mental Health Racism & Discrimination United States Thought-Provoking Emotionally Gripping Hospital
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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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Thank you!

Thank you for honoring those who were at Crownsville and telling their story! Thank you for inspiring us to do the right things in the future!

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7 people found this helpful

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Jim Crow Era Assylum

Definitely a good story. The author does a good job of pulling everything together. The ability to meet with the families and staff and share their story is wonderful. I wish there were more details about specific people, but they just don’t exist.

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Jim Crow Lives

This is the story of Crownsville State Hospital in Maryland, an institution for mentally ill Blacks that for most of its history was an underfunded and poorly administered dumping ground in the guise of a hospital. It housed not only psychiatric patients, but persons with other disabilities, criminals, and more generally Blacks who for whatever reason — legitimate or not — crossed paths with law enforcement. It is a horrific story of abuse, neglect, racial stereotyping, and general disregard for people who desperately needed support and expert care, but who were often brutalized by a system supposedly designed to benefit them. This institution existed until the early 21st century. Sadly, it’s just one example of similar institutions around the country. And, though to a much lesser degree, is an indictment of some systems and institutions (large and small) currently serving persons with disabilities, especially minorities, that continue to be underfunded, poorly staffed, and often incapable of providing expert care to their residents/patients.

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Crownsville

This was so well written. And in many many places made me so angry. I have such a hard time understanding how one human can treat another so awful. And so many others turn their heads so as to not see.

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A very important history and a path forward

Finding this book has been important in my doctoral studies of mental health and public health. I plan to cite excerpts for my upcoming dissertation.

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I identify

Thank you for shining the light on mental illnesses . I spent my childhood being shuttled between living with my mother and stepdad until she became too unhinged , then having to be institutionalized due a schizophrenic episode, then off to the care of the state, a foster care. Additionally was her husband’s alcoholism and the physical fighting /abuse.

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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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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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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