Central Lunatic Asylum for the Colored Insane: A history of African Americans with mental disabilities, 1844--1885

This dissertation examines the treatment of African Americans with mental disabilities during the nineteenth century. The study focuses on Central Lunatic Asylum for the Colored Insane, which was established in Richmond, Virginia in 1869. After emancipation, Virginia did more than another other state to segregate and institutionalize mentally disabled African Americans. ^ The first chapter is an examination of the lives of slaves with mental illness as well as their treatment by conjurers, slave owners, “regular” doctors and alienists. Chapter two is an analysis of the racial ideology of Southern asylum superintendents in the late nineteenth century. Chapter three turns to the circumstances which resulted in the establishment of Central Lunatic Asylum in 1869. Chapter four considers the implications of the political context in which Central operated from 1870, when it opened at its temporary location, to 1885, when it moved to its permanent location in Petersburg. Chapter five provides a discussion of patient demographics at Central, as well as diagnosis and treatment from 1870 to 1885.