Not a Human Being

Abstract

The two decades after the Civil War saw the creation of a handful of insane asylums for African Americans in the South. The first of these institutions was the Central Lunatic Asylum of Virginia, to which all African American patients at the Eastern Lunatic Asylum were transferred at the end of the war. The quality of care at asylums generally deteriorated in this period due to overcrowding and underfunding, but this chapter argues that asylums for African Americans were at the opprobrious vanguard. Focusing on conditions at Central Lunatic Asylum reveals that moral means were immediately abandoned in favor of mechanical restraint and hard labor because white superintendents asserted that newly freedmen and women lacked a moral conscience and refined sensibilities. Using dehumanizing language, they characterized patients as sexually profligate and viewed African American religious culture as inferior.