For the Washington Post magazine, I wrote about a collection of newly preserved records at Virginia’s Central State Hospital, the first ever mental hospital for African American patients, and what they tell us about racism then and now. Image of female patients at Central State from Wikipedia.

Patients could be hospitalized for manias supposedly brought on by “religious excitement” or “freedom.” Women were committed because they were upset about their husband’s desertion, or because they had intense menstrual pain. People could be committed by a White employer or by others in the community, essentially on hearsay, with little chance to defend their sanity in court. Shelby Pumphrey, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in African American history at Vassar College who has studied Central’s turn-of-the-century records closely, found only one reported instance of someone who avoided being committed once a process was initiated — and no one who committed themselves. Many patients attempted to escape, and many others, like Stewart, died of unrelated illnesses contracted in the hospital. Those who died were buried in unmarked graves, some of which may have been disturbed by grave robbers hunting for cadavers to be used at local medical colleges.