Initially, I applied for the Marvin and Kathleen Stone Fellowship to complete my thesis. The “Values Lab” Seminar for the Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology has evolved that goal into two journal articles for future publication. Both articles will explore the intersectionality of race and mental illness in the nineteenth century. These articles will explore conversations about mental illness and race following the 1840 census and in the aftermath of Emancipation through the early twentieth century, respectively. Both will employ discourse analysis rather than approaching mental illness in terms of social practices such as treatment, as other historians have done. My articles will make a historiographic intervention in a field where very little has been written on the history of mental illness and race overall.
My first article will look at the dialogue surrounding race and mental illness in the aftermath of the 1840 census. The 1840 census reported significantly higher rates of insanity among free African Americans versus the enslaved. I have found that southern proponents of slavery utilized the erroneous findings of the 1840 census in an effort to demonstrate that the institution of slavery protected the enslaved from mental illness. Although statistician and mental health practitioner Edward Jarvis debunked the 1840 thesis data, I found he still shared in the pro-slavery “construction” of race and mental illness. In other words, Jarvis agreed that the institution of slavery probably protected the enslaved from mental illness, sharing in the belief that African Americans could not handle competition with white Americans in a free society. In short, freedom and exposure to civilization for African Americans was believed to be a precursor to mental illnesses. I have strong support for my assertion that Edward Jarvis shared in the “construction” of race and mental illness with pro-slavery proponents in the primary sources I have been able to analyze. While the historiography notes that Jarvis debunked the census, it does not note that he shared in racist views on slavery and the mental health of the enslaved. What I need now to strengthen my argument is more on the theory of the social construction of mental illness or disease more broadly. Thanks to the support of the Stone Fellowship, this article is near completion. I hope to be able to submit it for consideration to an academic journal sometime this fall.
My second article will look at race and mental illness the aftermath of Emancipation. The pro-slavery proponents who argued that the institution of slavery protected the enslaved from mental illness predicted an epidemic of mental illness should Emancipation ever occur. Emancipation represented an enormous change in the lived experiences of African Americans in the South. Nonetheless, despite the end of slavery, I found continuity from 1840 through the turn of the twentieth century in terms of the equation of freedom with mental illness for African Americans. My analysis of white supremacist discourse from Emancipation to the beginning of the twentieth century looks at how white supremacists consistently weaponized conceptions of disability to strip African Americans of citizenship rights from religious freedom to personal freedom. While my 1840 census article looks at both the medical press and the popular press, the focus of this article is on discourse within the medical community. Prior to Emancipation, most asylums did not admit African Americans. Emancipation changed that. This paper will look at how asylum superintendents and the broader mental health practitioner community processed a perceived increase in insanity among African Americans. With the support of the Stone Fellowship, I have been able to gather primary source materials. My next step is to write a draft of the article for review by my academic mentors.
I am grateful to the Stone Fellowship for supporting these research projects.