Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

by Antonia Hylton

On February 25, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. stood at a podium in Los Angeles and asked the nation to make a full accounting of the atrocities committed at home and abroad. “We see the rice fields of a small Asian country being trampled at will and burned at whim; we see grief-stricken mothers with crying babies clutched in their arms as they watch their little huts burst forth into flames; we see the fields and valleys of battle being painted with humankind’s blood; we see the broken bodies left prostrate in countless fields; we see young men being sent home half-men—physically handicapped and mentally deranged.”