Crownsville Hospital in Anne Arundel County was Maryland's infamous segregated mental health asylum, and the only such facility available to Black people in Maryland between 1911 and desegregation in the 1960s.

A new book by journalist Antonia Hylton traces the history of Crownsville Hospital, the struggles and triumphs of its patients, the lives of its staff and medical personnel and what this singular institution tells us about mental illness, racism and community in America. Along the way, Hylton grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the shame that blossomed in secrecy and darkness for generations.

The book is called “Madness: Race And Insanity In A Jim Crow Asylum.”

Hylton is a Peabody and two-time Emmy award-winning correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC.

(Photo by Mark Clennon)

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