Special Exhibit, Town Hall by APA Library to Mark Black History Month

The Melvin Sabshin, M.D. Library and Archives, under the direction of Deena Gorland, M.S.L.I.S., is sponsoring a series of events on the history of the Central Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane to mark Black History Month. Central Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane, now Central State Hospital, opened in 1870 in Petersburg, Va., and was the first state hospital in the United States exclusively for African Americans. Rather than integrate its two existing asylums, Virginia’s governor signed legislation to house all “insane” Black people in a former Confederate hospital. The governor alleged that the two other Virginia asylums lacked sufficient space.

The Black History Month commemoration includes a live exhibition at APA’s headquarters and a virtual exhibition posted here. The exhibition includes primary source documents, photographs, public laws, news articles, and admission and treatment data from Central State Hospital’s records. A virtual town hall with historian and Central State Hospital expert King Davis, Ph.D., a professor of research in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin, will be held on Tuesday, February 22, at 7:30 p.m.

Analysis of these primary source documents confirms that at the conclusion of the Civil War, strict racial separation and medical disparities were ubiquitous throughout Virginia. APA’s forerunner, the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane, played a central role in setting segregation policies in asylums. Integrating insane asylums would have established a new racial covenant consistent with the aims of Reconstruction but contrary to the recommendations of asylum directors and the state’s asylum commission.

The trove of historical documents in the exhibition reveals that the decision to open a separate institution for Blacks was based on a series of hypotheses that created a false connection between Blackness, freedom from enslavement, and the risk of psychiatric illness. Contemporary research by Jonathan Metzl, M.D., Ph.D., found that these historical faux assumptions resulted in disproportionate diagnoses of severe mental illness as Blacks sought equitable access to civil rights well into the 21st century.

“The history of Central State Hospital is part of the untold history of America, APA, and the field of psychiatry,” said Rawle Andrews Jr., executive director of the APA Foundation. “Taking ownership of this history is an important step toward atoning for the harm to Black patients and their families who did not get the care or compassion they deserved.” ■