Patients of all backgrounds were given tasks, asked to clean or make crafts, and promised that work could alleviate mental distress. But what was about to happen in Maryland was unlike anything ever recorded in the country. It would be the first and only asylum in the state, and likely the nation, to force its patients to build their own hospital from the ground up. Black Marylanders would have to earn their access to healthcare through hard labor and a return to the antebellum social order.
