
Madness
Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum
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Narrated by:
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Antonia Hylton
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By:
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Antonia Hylton
About this listen
In the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a compelling 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation’s last segregated asylums, told by an award-winning journalist on her decade-long search for sanity in America’s mental healthcare system.
On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state’s Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports listeners behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum.
In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.
As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America’s evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital’s wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America’s new focus.
In Madness, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.
©2024 Antonia Hylton (P)2024 Legacy LitListeners also enjoyed...
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- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Margaret A. Burnham challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in harrowing cases between 1920 and 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system of the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the line from slavery to the legal structures of this period—and through to today.
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Heartbreaking
- By sharon on 11-24-22
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An Abundance of Katherines
- By: John Green
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has $10,000 in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun - but no Katherines.
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struggled to finish listening
- By Daniel on 03-11-20
By: John Green
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The Devil You Know
- A Black Power Manifesto
- By: Charles M. Blow
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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From journalist and New York Times best-selling author Charles Blow comes a powerful manifesto and call to action for Black Americans to amass political power and fight white supremacy.
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A radical plan for Black liberation
- By Elizabeth on 01-27-21
By: Charles M. Blow
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White Lies
- The Double Life of Walter F. White and America's Darkest Secret
- By: A.J. Baime
- Narrated by: Wayne Carr
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Walter F. White led two lives: one as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP in the early twentieth century; the other as a white newspaperman who covered lynching crimes in the Deep South at the blazing height of racial violence. Born mixed race and with very fair skin and straight hair, White was able to “pass” for white. He leveraged this ambiguity as a reporter, bringing to light the darkest crimes in America and helping to plant the seeds of the civil rights movement.
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A difficult but essential read
- By Heather Wellington on 05-21-22
By: A.J. Baime
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Integrated
- How American Schools Failed Black Children
- By: Noliwe Rooks
- Narrated by: Noliwe Rooks
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 17, 1954 the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education determined that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. Heralded as a massive victory for civil rights, the decision's goal was to give Black children equitable access to educational opportunities and clear a path to a better future. Yet in the years following the ruling, schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods were shuttered or saw their funding dwindle, Black educators were fired en masse, and Black children faced discrimination and violence from their white peers.
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The voice was great This book point of departure is the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education
- By Darrell Turner on 05-21-25
By: Noliwe Rooks
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We Refuse
- A Forceful History of Black Resistance
- By: Kellie Carter Jackson
- Narrated by: Kellie Carter Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolence and Malcolm X's "by any means necessary." In We Refuse, historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women.
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Insightful
- By TRACEY D. SCOTT on 06-10-25
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Red Summer
- The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America
- By: Cameron McWhirter
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War. Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Red Summer is the first narrative history about this epic encounter.
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Better Understand 2019 by Looking Closely at 1919
- By JAS on 03-27-19
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Unmask Alice
- LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries
- By: Rick Emerson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous.
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I’m from Pleasant Grove where rumors of Jay’s Journal are alive and well
- By Ruby Tuesday on 10-06-22
By: Rick Emerson
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Wild Girls
- How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation
- By: Tiya Miles
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 4 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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This work of history puts girls of all races—and the landscapes they loved—at center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women's independence, resourcefulness, and vision.
By: Tiya Miles
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Homebodies
- A Novel
- By: Tembe Denton-Hurst
- Narrated by: Marcella Cox
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Mickey Hayward dreams of writing stories that matter, but, for now, her days are filled with listicles about lip gloss and click-bait articles about celebrity haircare. Still, the job is flashy and her girlfriend is steady and supportive. The path may be long, but Mickey’s well on her way, and it’s far from the messy life she left behind in Maryland. Everything finally seems to be falling into place—until she finds out she’s being replaced.
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I wanted more
- By Reya on 03-16-25
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A Dangerously High Threshold for Pain
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: Imani Perry
- Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
- Original Recording
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Imani Perry’s Audible Original A Dangerously High Threshold for Pain tells the dramatic story of her ongoing struggle with lupus—an autoimmune disease that attacks multiple organ systems—and what we can all learn from those who are grappling with chronic illness. It’s a powerful and poetic story that evokes the works of Susan Sontag, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Audre Lorde.
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Powerful
- By Melissa Medley on 03-11-23
By: Imani Perry
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The Ultimate W.E.B. Du Bois Collection
- The Souls of Black Folk, The Gift of Black Folk, The Negro & 10 Speeches and Letters
- By: W. E. B. Du Bois
- Narrated by: Museum Audiobooks Cast
- Length: 27 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963), was an author, scholar, sociologist, historian, Pan-Africanist, and civil rights activist. After completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, he became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University.
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Must read for anyone to try to understand the black struggle in America
- By Scott H Adams on 09-25-24
By: W. E. B. Du Bois
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Black in Blues
- How a Color Tells the Story of My People
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: Imani Perry
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?” In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey.
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So many lessons in this book
- By Christina the Teacher on 02-04-25
By: Imani Perry
Historical impact on today
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Should Be Required Reading
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Powerful interlacing of a history of mental health and the social context…
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This is must read!
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Good book about bad times
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Thank you!
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Jim Crow Era Assylum
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Jim Crow Lives
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Great read
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Madness
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