Separate asylums by color: Central State (Virginia, 1870) and Crownsville (Maryland, 1911) (Petersburg, VA; Crownsville, MD)

SUMMARYSeparate asylums by color: Central State (Virginia, 1870) and Crownsville (Maryland, 1911) (Petersburg, VA; Crownsville, MD) [Connections: Masonic color line, asylums, castles, wight, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDCentral State Hospital began in 1870 as the Central Lunatic Asylum at Howard's Grove, a former Confederate hospital, reassigned to treat "colored persons of unsound mind." It moved in 1885 to new buildings at Petersburg. It "served only African Americans until the Civil Rights Acts of 1964." Thirty-nine residents were among more than 7,500 Virginians sterilized without consent between 1924 and 1972. Maryland's General Assembly created the "Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland" by an act of 11 April 1910. A State Lunacy Commission report of December 1912 says patients pushed "barrows of concrete up a tramway three and a half stories in height," so the patients built their own asylum. A 1948 Baltimore Sun series ("Maryland's Shame") said: "More than 1800 men, women and children are herded into its buildings meant for not more than 1,100." About 1,600 patients lie in graves "marked by numbers only." Adults were integrated in 1963, and the hospital closed in July 2004

PATTERNThe color line was built into hospital law. A separate asylum was chartered for each "race," with patient labor and numbered graves

LENS (WW9)States drew the split in brick, and the patients were made to lay it

OPENAll points here are from Wikipedia. Pull the 1870 Virginia act and the Maryland 1910 act (Laws of Maryland), and the Library of Virginia's state-hospital records guide ("Endeavor To Restore Them," 2021)

SOURCEWikipedia: Central State Hospital (Virginia)); Wikipedia: Crownsville Hospital Center.