As the Eagle to the Sparrow

Abstract

This chapter discusses the lives of the enslaved men and women who worked at the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, particularly their interactions with patients and administrators. Enslaved attendants were tasked with arduous labor; enslaved women were assigned the most menial jobs. They were also entrusted with significant authority; some were even authorized to seize and forcibly medicate patients when moral methods failed. Dorothea Dix and other asylum reformers criticized the asylum for its reliance on slave labor because they didn’t believe slaves were capable of providing moral treatment. Despite the challenges of institutional caregiving, enslaved attendants used their influence to assert their capacity for moral judgment. The actions of asylum slaves suggest that an ethic empathic equality rooted in Afro-Christianity was central to their conception of care.