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Speaker 1: Mississippi State Hospital Museum that.

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Speaker 2: We're standing in a hallway at the Mississippi State Hospital

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Speaker 2: at Whitfield, one of a handful of state run residential

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Speaker 2: mental health facilities still operating here. It's my first time

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Speaker 2: really seeing the hospital, but I've heard about it my

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Speaker 2: whole life. Everyone in Mississippi has.

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Speaker 3: It was the threat that your family always gave you.

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Speaker 2: If you act crazy, you'll go to Whitfield.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, people see you do that. You're going to Whitfield.

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Speaker 4: If you don't behave I'm going.

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Speaker 5: To take competer Whitfield.

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Speaker 3: What you out?

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Speaker 6: Whitfield.

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Speaker 2: That's the informal name for the Mississippi State Hospital. It's

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Speaker 2: been Mississippi's primary mental health facility since nineteen thirty five,

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Speaker 2: when the state shuttered the old asylum in Jackson and

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Speaker 2: moved those patients out here. It's that place your mom

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Speaker 2: says you'll go if you don't act right, the place

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Speaker 2: your friend's neighbor got sent. It has mythic status in Mississippi.

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Speaker 2: But standing here in a marble room full of outdated

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Speaker 2: therapy equipment, wod Field's not scary. It's quaint, at least

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Speaker 2: in the museum. Hard to say how much of that

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Speaker 2: is because of our tour guides, Donna Brown and Kathy Denton.

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Speaker 2: These two have been here for decades and know everything

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Speaker 2: about the place. Donna took the lead with Kathy chiming in.

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Speaker 2: I noticed a black and white photo of a woman

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Speaker 2: in what looks like a shower.

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Speaker 3: The lady in the shower.

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Speaker 5: They had to pencil in Panny and broad hard cuf

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Speaker 5: it was pornography for nineteen thirty eight.

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Speaker 2: It's a quirky museum. There's a display of patient run

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Speaker 2: newspapers and literary magazines, and then around the corner posters

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Speaker 2: for movies were Whitfield makes a cameo, including the Sandra

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Speaker 2: Bullet classic A Time to Kill.

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Speaker 4: The scene in the movie where she breaks into the

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Speaker 4: psychiatrist's office was filmed in the building that you passed

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Speaker 4: on the way to this one and.

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Speaker 5: The Beast within.

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Speaker 4: You watch a lot of it on YouTube, but you're

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Speaker 4: going to recognize very little of the hospital. There's a

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Speaker 4: lot of screaming and running and dark.

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Speaker 2: Part of the museum is housed in one of what

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Speaker 2: Field's old hydrotherapy units. Hydrotherapy basically means using water as

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Speaker 2: medical treatment for physical or mental health. If you ever

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Speaker 2: taken a dip at a spa, you've had hydrotherapy.

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Speaker 7: Today you can go the spa.

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Speaker 5: They'll wrap you in mud, sand, alojl seaweed, coffee grounds, tea, leave.

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Speaker 3: Salt, sugar.

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Speaker 5: The most expensive one I've found is Pink Indie in

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Speaker 5: sand in New Orleans, twelve hundred dollars forty five minutes.

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Speaker 2: Back in the day, it was on the bleeding edge

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Speaker 2: of mental health care, Woodfield hydrotherapy, and it consisted of

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Speaker 2: several rooms of white marble from the floor all the

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Speaker 2: way up to the ceiling, and the kind of porcelain

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Speaker 2: sinks and claw footed tubs that an HGTV host would.

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Speaker 7: Kill for hydro therapy does.

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Speaker 5: Now, this is by far the treatment of choice. Just

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Speaker 5: a long soak and a big old back, yeah big.

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Speaker 2: But other hydrotherapy practices were more brutal than relaxing.

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Speaker 5: Now, this is a needle spray shower or a Scotch shower.

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Speaker 5: He's one of these nozzles. Control the jet of the

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Speaker 5: water cold here, hot, here, back and forth. The doctor

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Speaker 5: would literally write a prescription. The patient would come in,

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Speaker 5: go to the center, hold on to the bars.

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Speaker 7: She would start spraying the formula. See the petals.

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Speaker 5: They're not here today, but at control of the intensity

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Speaker 5: via water.

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Speaker 2: If you've seen one flew over the cuckoo's nest, it's

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Speaker 2: easy to imagine a sadistic nurse ratchet gleefully blasting patients

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Speaker 2: into submission. But the first antipsychotic drug wasn't introduced until

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Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, nearly one hundred years after Mississippi opened

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Speaker 2: its original State asylum. Donna tells us that the doctors

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Speaker 2: of that era really believed that this was an effective treatment.

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Speaker 2: Donna waved us toward another room. This one was almost

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Speaker 2: like a grotto with a big slab smack dab in

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Speaker 2: the middle like an altar. That's where the patients would

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Speaker 2: be placed.

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Speaker 7: This is a wet pag treatment.

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Speaker 5: When he came, he was very many, very fidgetive. They

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Speaker 5: wanted to calm him down, so they wrapped him in

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Speaker 5: sheets as tind as they could, much like a swaddled baby.

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Speaker 5: Got him on the table, hot and cold water faucetsteads soaking.

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Speaker 2: Now, before we exit the hydrotherapy unit, Donna reads us.

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Speaker 5: Upon meditation and hydrotherapy, Theodore Rothkey six hours a day,

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Speaker 5: I lay me down within this tub that cannot drown.

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Speaker 5: Within this primal element, the flesh is willing to repent.

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Speaker 5: I do not laugh, I do not cry. I'm sweating

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Speaker 5: out the will to die. My past is sliding.

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Speaker 3: Down the drain.

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Speaker 5: I soon will be myself again.

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Speaker 2: I wish Theodore ret Key were still around, because I'd

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Speaker 2: love to ask him about that last line. Is it

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Speaker 2: sarcastic or did he really feel like an ice bath

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Speaker 2: restored his sanity? Was he just hoping that it would.

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Speaker 2: The more I've listen, the more I hear irony, and

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Speaker 2: I soon will be myself again. But maybe that's because

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Speaker 2: of the place asylums have come to occupy in my

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Speaker 2: or really in the American imagination. It's a place of

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Speaker 2: broken promises. You're supposed to get better, but in most

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Speaker 2: stories I've read, most movies I've seen, the opposite happens.

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Speaker 2: Maybe that's why they's such a popular setting for horror films.

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Speaker 2: That may be the narrative we have today, but it's

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Speaker 2: not the one the asylum started with. The promise of

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Speaker 2: the Old Asylum was that it was a place for healing,

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Speaker 2: But over one third of the patients who passed through

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Speaker 2: the Old asylum's doors died within them.

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Speaker 8: The popular narrative is that it was great when it

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Speaker 8: started out and then it just went downhill. The true narrative,

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Speaker 8: I think, is just a much more complicated than that.

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Speaker 2: So how exactly did this promise break? I'm Larison Campbell

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Speaker 2: in This is under Yazuklay. When word got out back

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Speaker 2: in twenty twelve that thousands of bodies had been found

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Speaker 2: at the site of Mississippi's Old Asylum, the news spread fast.

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Speaker 3: This is the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

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Speaker 1: Its campus is home to six health science schools, more

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Speaker 1: than three thousand students, and thousands of unmarked graves.

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Speaker 6: It hit that viral sweet spot.

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Speaker 2: A horror movie and one headline not just confirming our

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Speaker 2: dark expectations but exceeding them. It's death and drama in

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Speaker 2: the Old South and a lunatic asylum all bald into one.

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Speaker 7: What ends up is the Southern Gothic, the terrain of terror.

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Speaker 2: That's Mab Secrest. Southern scholar and historical author. Mab spent

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Speaker 2: more than fifteen years researching and studying Georgia's Millageville Asylum.

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Speaker 2: Because this isn't just a Mississippi story. Any states had

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Speaker 2: asylums in and out of the South. But the terrain

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Speaker 2: of terror that mAbs describing, that's not the way things

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Speaker 2: started out for our old asylum.

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Speaker 7: Starts off is a story about Enlightenment optimism, and it

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Speaker 7: starts in Europe, and it comes to this country.

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Speaker 2: That enlightenment, she mentions, is the Enlightenment, that glowing moment

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Speaker 2: of philosophy and reason in Europe between the seventeenth and

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Speaker 2: nineteenth centuries. Eventually, these ideals made their way across the pond.

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Speaker 2: Until people were enlightened. Society's primary solution for dealing with

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Speaker 2: severe mental illness was simple isolation or restraint, sometimes both.

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Speaker 2: That could mean the family home behind a locked door

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Speaker 2: in a back room, or if you're a first wife

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Speaker 2: of Victorian literature, in the attic. For those whose families

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Speaker 2: couldn't care for them, there were public almshouses and the

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Speaker 2: county jail. How far we've come. Physical restraints were common,

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Speaker 2: sanitation standards non existent. Dungeons were a real thing. The

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Speaker 2: goal here separate the ill person.

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Speaker 6: From the non ill community.

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Speaker 2: But as Enlightenment ideas called on, as medicine and science

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Speaker 2: became more robust, doctors began to argue that mental illness

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Speaker 2: was a problem society could actually solve.

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Speaker 9: Doctors start to believe that you can heal the troubled

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Speaker 9: mind if you change the environment, and if you put

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Speaker 9: them in a beautiful place. Then you give them doctors

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Speaker 9: who pay attention and listen to them, you give them

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Speaker 9: good nutrition, you give them a beautiful setting, and you

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Speaker 9: give them some occupational therapy.

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Speaker 7: Then they'll get better. It's called the moral therapy.

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Speaker 9: But you could cure people about changing structures, which is

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Speaker 9: a very progressive idea, and you know, can really cure

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Speaker 9: insanity with these different hospitals.

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Speaker 2: It was a revolutionary idea. Change a person's outside environment

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Speaker 2: and they'll change internally. But in practical terms, what does

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Speaker 2: the infrastructure of calm quietude look like? In the eighteen forties,

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Speaker 2: a physician in Philadelphia came up with an.

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Speaker 8: Answer, Thomas Kirkbride, who was a psychiatrist who was very

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Speaker 8: devoted to taking care of people with mental health issues.

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Speaker 8: And you know, it's this whole idea that if you

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Speaker 8: just get away from the normal pressures of life and

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Speaker 8: have a little time to breathe and to enjoy the

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Speaker 8: fresh air and to be taken care of, then you'll

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Speaker 8: get better and you can return to life as a

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Speaker 8: normal citizen.

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Speaker 2: That was Leida Gibson, coordinator of the Asylum Hill Project.

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Speaker 2: Thomas Kirkbride would later formalize his plan into a magnum

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Speaker 2: opus with a title on the Construction, Organization and General

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Speaker 2: Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane, with some remarks on

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Speaker 2: insanity and its treatment.

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Speaker 6: He was specific.

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Speaker 2: The plan included exact staff numbers, roles, and even salaries.

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Speaker 2: He drew up measurements for rooms and windows and the

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Speaker 2: space between windows down to the inch.

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Speaker 3: The kirkbry Plan.

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Speaker 8: The idea was that you had to have a certain

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Speaker 8: amount of cubic feet of air space in order to

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Speaker 8: get well. These were rooms with really tall ceilings. They

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Speaker 8: had huge windows. The patients could open the windows and

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Speaker 8: you'll notice from the plan there's a haul down the

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Speaker 8: middle and then every room on every side has a window.

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Speaker 8: People had their own rooms when it first started. I

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Speaker 8: mean this would be like a luxurious dorm room.

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Speaker 7: It called on.

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Speaker 2: The first was in Trenton, New Jersey. Other states followed.

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Speaker 2: The Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum was one of the first

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Speaker 2: dozen in the country. In the first Kirkbright Hospital in

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Speaker 2: the Deep South. Just to ground you in the timeline

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Speaker 2: real quick. The Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum opened its doors

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Speaker 2: in eighteen fifty five. It had taken five years to

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Speaker 2: complete at a cost of one hundred and seventy five

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Speaker 2: thousand dollars. That's about seven million in today's money. If

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Speaker 2: this level of benevolence and generosity for Mississippians with mental

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Speaker 2: illness seems out of character for a state government whose

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Speaker 2: focus was keeping slavery legal, don't worry. The decision to

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Speaker 2: build this asylum to look after a quote less fortunate

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Speaker 2: Mississippians does not buck the narrative you've come to know.

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Speaker 2: Let's say it's the eighteen fifties. You're a Mississippi lawmaker

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Speaker 2: trying to put a shine on an image badly tarnished

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Speaker 2: by I don't know, your refusal to stop treating humans

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Speaker 2: like chattel. Maybe investing in this monument to those Enlightenment

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Speaker 2: ideals of individual liberty natural rights in the social contract

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Speaker 2: starts to seem like a good way to thumb your

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Speaker 2: nose all those Yankees crying about the immorality of slavery,

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Speaker 2: a sort of see we're not all bad.

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Speaker 8: Perhaps It's not so pointed in the institutional records, but

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Speaker 8: you read between the lines and you say, you know,

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Speaker 8: look at what we do for those unfortunates among us.

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Speaker 3: They did not use the words.

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Speaker 8: That would be that would be acceptable today, but and

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Speaker 8: this became something that they could point to.

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Speaker 3: This was the most.

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Speaker 8: Impressive structure in the state that remained after the Civil War.

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Speaker 8: This was sort of a monument to the goodness of

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Speaker 8: Mississippi leaders.

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Speaker 2: And that's exactly what a nurse named Dorothea Dix was

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Speaker 2: banking on. Probably heard her name before, because Dicks almost

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Speaker 2: single handedly created the first generation of state asylums in

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Speaker 2: the eighteen forties. Dorothea Dix turned Kirkbride's asylum plan into

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Speaker 2: something of a road show, lobbying state legislatures in the

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Speaker 2: North and the South to build these hospitals.

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Speaker 7: Reading about Dorothea Dix was very instructive to me on

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Speaker 7: the relationships of mental hospitals in the South versus the

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Speaker 7: North in an environment of growing abolition.

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Speaker 2: She began her career as a teacher, but on March

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Speaker 2: twenty eighth, eighteen forty one, the thirty five year old

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Speaker 2: went to teach a Sunday school class at East Cambridge

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Speaker 2: House of Corrections in Massachusetts. There she found groups of

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Speaker 2: women experiencing psychiatric conditions. They were chained in dirty, unheated cells.

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Speaker 2: Many had never committed a crime but were locked up

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Speaker 2: with violent felons. They'd been starved, tortured, and sexually assaulted.

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Speaker 2: From that day forward, she became a tireless advocate for

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Speaker 2: better treatment for people with mental illness.

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Speaker 7: And Dorothea Dix is one of the heroines of the

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Speaker 7: humane treatment of insane people and institutions, especially this Kirkbride model,

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Speaker 7: which was supposed to kind of separate out and bring

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Speaker 7: them in, and it's a whole architecture of sanity in

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Speaker 7: that way.

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Speaker 2: In Mississippi, she presented the state legislature with the findings

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Speaker 2: from a study she'd done. She told them how Mississippians

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Speaker 2: with mental illness were living in poverty and all alone,

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Speaker 2: often quote chained in closets and attics, in jails or dungeons.

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Speaker 2: Mississippi lawmakers were blown away. They appropriated the full amount

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Speaker 2: requested fifty thousand dollars for the construction of a new

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Speaker 2: state asylum, and then they made their first mistake because

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Speaker 2: they picked a site right at the thickest part of

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Speaker 2: that Yazoo clay. The foundation was laid and then relayed,

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Speaker 2: more building delays, more structural problems. The Mississippi State Lunatic

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Speaker 2: Asylum finally opened its doors, more than one hundred and

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Speaker 2: twenty five thousand dollars over that initial budget. But it

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Speaker 2: was a beautiful neoclassical building with a thirty five foot

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Speaker 2: tall portico supported by six doric columns visible all the

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Speaker 2: way down to Fortification Street about a mile away. It

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Speaker 2: had a capacity for two hundred and fifty patients. Remember

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Speaker 2: that number. The grandiosity of the architecture speaks to the

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Speaker 2: grand plans Mississippi.

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Speaker 6: Had for the place.

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Speaker 2: This wasn't a warehouse for the community's problems. Warehouses don't

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Speaker 2: get columns and kubolas. This was a place that would

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Speaker 2: cure people. After all. This was the era of rapidly

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Speaker 2: evolving medical treatment. In the nineteenth century, Doctors began to

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Speaker 2: link dirt and filth with disease. Cities began installing sewage

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Speaker 2: and sanitation systems. Germs themselves still hadn't been discovered, but

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Speaker 2: concepts of germ theory were there. A smallpox vaccine, Cholera's

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Speaker 2: connection to contaminated water. Science was beginning to conquer physical maladies,

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Speaker 2: why should disease of the mind be any different. There's

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Speaker 2: something else we haven't told you about Dorothea Dix, something

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Speaker 2: that probably helped her connect with lawmakers in the Antebellum South.

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Speaker 7: She in fact is very, i would say viryingly anti

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Speaker 7: black racist. Dorothya Dix didn't link black people, and she

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Speaker 7: thought that insane people were treated with some black people.

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Speaker 7: So Southern legislators loved her.

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Speaker 2: And when black patients were admitted, their quality of care

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Speaker 2: was substantially lower.

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Speaker 8: Sod they were initially a separate wing for the black patients,

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Speaker 8: and then very quickly they built annexes off the back

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Speaker 8: that were three stories as well. But you know, obviously

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Speaker 8: they weren't as big and spacious as the initial.

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Speaker 2: Structure, meaning these facilities for the black patients. They never

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Speaker 2: even tried to adhere to the Kirkbride plan, which was

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Speaker 2: the whole reason the asylum was built in the first place.

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Speaker 2: In order for the quote curative properties of the Kirkbride

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Speaker 2: model to work, the patients need physical space, big private rooms,

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Speaker 2: fresh air, careful attention from doctors and nurses, and if

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Speaker 2: patients aren't recovering enough to be released. It creates a

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Speaker 2: backlog crowding, and then even the patients who could have

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Speaker 2: been helped by the Kirkbride plan no longer getting better.

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Speaker 2: Part of the reason for the overcrowding many of the

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Speaker 2: people living and dying at the Old Asylum weren't mentally ill.

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Speaker 2: That's after the break. The largest art museum in the state,

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Speaker 2: the Mississippi Museum of Art, connects Mississippi to the world

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Speaker 2: and the power of art to the power of community.

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Speaker 2: Located in downtown Jackson, the museum's permanent collection is free

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Speaker 2: to the public. National and international exhibitions rotate throughout the year,

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Speaker 2: allowing visitors to experience works from around the world. The

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Speaker 2: gardens at Expansive Lawn at the Mississippi Museum of Art

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Speaker 2: are home to art installations in a variety of events

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Speaker 2: for all ages. Plan your visit today at MS museumart

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Speaker 2: dot org.

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Speaker 6: That's MS Museum art dot org.

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Speaker 7: This right here is very interesting.

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Speaker 5: It's a register for the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum.

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Speaker 2: While at the Woodfield Museum, my producer Rebecca and I

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Speaker 2: came across a giant ledger easily five inches thick with

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Speaker 2: hundreds of pages. Each page was a list of names,

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Speaker 2: then census details like gender, age, race, written in neat cursive,

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Speaker 2: along with the reason each patient was admitted.

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Speaker 3: Oh, oh ill.

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Speaker 10: Health, menopause, Yes, PMS is in here somewhere, okay, agree,

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Speaker 10: fright a couplet?

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Speaker 2: Religion, Yeah, grief, fright, PMS, religion. These were some of

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Speaker 2: the causes for institutionalization noted during patient intakes. With so

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Speaker 2: many possible reasons for admission, maybe it's no surprise that

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Speaker 2: the place got overcrowded.

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Speaker 8: Yes, So the Kirkbright Plan in general, and certainly the

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Speaker 8: institution in Mississippi was established for those people who could

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Speaker 8: be cured. It was never meant as a place to

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Speaker 8: where people would live out their lives, but there were

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Speaker 8: no other options. So what do you do with somebody

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Speaker 8: who is having epileptic seizures all day long? What do

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Speaker 8: you do with people who are never going to get better?

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Speaker 8: And you know, this idea that people who had been

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Speaker 8: dethroned of reason were the only people that this institution

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Speaker 8: could serve was just not realistic from the beginning. And

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Speaker 8: I think that's the popular narrative that they just said,

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Speaker 8: you know, okay, We're going to just become everything to

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Speaker 8: all these people who need different things. They simply were

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Speaker 8: reacting to the situation at the time. And you know,

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Speaker 8: in a couple of the reports, people say, what are

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Speaker 8: we supposed to do when people show up at the door?

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Speaker 8: Are we supposed to just leave them out on the streets?

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Speaker 8: And so there were a lot of people who were

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Speaker 8: accepted in the asylum, and there was an acknowledgement that

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Speaker 8: they weren't going to get better. So the philosophy never

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Speaker 8: really changed. It was simply that they had to deal

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Speaker 8: with the cards they were dealt.

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Speaker 2: One of the cards Mississippi got dealt a disease called palagra.

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Speaker 2: You heard about it from Wayne Lee the grave Delzer.

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Speaker 2: It's that nutritional deficiency that killed his grandfather.

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Speaker 11: He wasn't crazy, he was just starving.

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Speaker 8: I mean, I had never even heard of palagra before.

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Speaker 8: So palagor was a nutritional deficiency that just swept the Southeast.

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Speaker 3: Starting at about nineteen ten.

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Speaker 8: And it's characterized by what they call the four d's, dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia,

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Speaker 8: death in that order, people from all walks of life

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Speaker 8: would come down with palagra. Of course, the dementia wasn't

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Speaker 8: apparent until close to the end, so many many patients,

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Speaker 8: especially those from the Delta, were admitted with polagra, and

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Speaker 8: in the institutional reports they talk about, you know, by

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Speaker 8: the time they get here, it's too late to do anything.

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Speaker 2: Palagora was not only an epidemic for decades, it remained

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Speaker 2: a medical mystery with.

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Speaker 6: A geographic preference the Southeast.

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Speaker 2: By the late nineteen thirties, three million Americans total had

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Speaker 2: contracted palagora, most of them Southerners. Mississippi was ground zero

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Speaker 2: of the Palagora epidemic, which is why a doctor named

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Speaker 2: Joseph Goldberger headed there to study it in nineteen fourteen.

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Speaker 2: Doctor Goldberger was a physician with the US Hygienic Laboratory,

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Speaker 2: the progenitor of today's National Institutes of Health.

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Speaker 8: So he did an experiment with prisoners the Rankin County Penitentiary.

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Speaker 8: These were quote volunteers who were then fed a very

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Speaker 8: specific diet, and they were able to understand that pelagra

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Speaker 8: came from this niais and deficiency.

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Speaker 2: See Mississippi's old Asylum. Might have begun life in the

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Speaker 2: wealthiest state in the country, but by the nineteen twenties,

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Speaker 2: Mississippi had assumed a position. We're all familiar with the country's.

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Speaker 8: Poorest, because if you look at the old pictures of

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Speaker 8: the you know of sharecroppers on the farms in the Delta,

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Speaker 8: that cotton is planted right up to the shacks. Because

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Speaker 8: they wanted to use every inch of land for cotton. Instead,

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Speaker 8: they stopped growing their own vegetables and raising hogs or

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Speaker 8: raising cattle or anything like that, and they bought everything

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Speaker 8: from the company's store. I think it's like fat back

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Speaker 8: and molasses.

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Speaker 2: Southern doctors found Goldberger's evidence offensive. I mean, here is

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Speaker 2: this Jewish doctor from New York City parachuting in just

379
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Speaker 2: to embarrass a whole region by calling them poor. Goldberger

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Speaker 2: had figured out that brewers yeast, the stuff you used

381
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Speaker 2: to make beer, could send Pelagora packing, but his solution

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Speaker 2: wouldn't be implemented at any scale until years later. During

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Speaker 2: one of the greatest natural disasters in US history, the

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Speaker 2: nineteen twenty seven Mississippi River floods, hundreds of thousands of

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Speaker 2: people lost their homes.

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Speaker 6: Tent cities sprung up along.

387
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Speaker 2: Levees from Memphis all the way down to Louisiana, and

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Speaker 2: off of Goldberger's advice, the Red Cross began adding brewers

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Speaker 2: yas to its food rations.

390
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Speaker 8: And that's why we have enriched foods. Now, that's what

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Speaker 8: it means. The advent of enriched foods was from Polagora.

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Speaker 2: This understanding of Pelagora progression complicates the narrative we're inclined

393
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Speaker 2: to jump to when it comes to the Old Asylum.

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Speaker 8: I know that a lot of the work that's been

395
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Speaker 8: done on asylums in the South in general assumes that

396
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Speaker 8: patients came to the asylums and were not fed well

397
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Speaker 8: and got poleegra at the asylum and then ended up

398
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Speaker 8: dying at polegra.

399
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Speaker 3: I think the story is much.

400
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Speaker 2: Different, counterintuitively, in terms of preventative medicine AKAA diet, the

401
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:28,880
Speaker 2: Old Asylum might have been one of the better places

402
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Speaker 2: in the state.

403
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Speaker 6: Stay with me here.

404
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Speaker 2: The asylums thirteen hundred acres included a farm, and it

405
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Speaker 2: wasn't just any old thing. It was an award winner

406
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Speaker 2: one that people came from all around just to see.

407
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Speaker 8: They raised cattle, They had an award winning hog operation,

408
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 8: award winning poultry operation. And my feeling is that patients

409
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Speaker 8: may have been better fed at the asylum than they

410
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Speaker 8: were at their homes.

411
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Speaker 2: You see the farm's bounty laid out and the superintendent's

412
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Speaker 2: by annual reports to the legislature, which, to be fair,

413
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Speaker 2: we're always trying to paint the asylum in the best

414
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:13,359
Speaker 2: possible light. Still, between June of nineteen eleven and July

415
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Speaker 2: of nineteen thirteen, which was just a couple of years

416
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Speaker 2: before doctor Goldberger was sent down to Mississippi, the vegetable

417
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 2: garden alone spanned about sixty acres. All of this maintained,

418
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:31,040
Speaker 2: of course by the patients themselves, but many palagor patients

419
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:33,680
Speaker 2: arrived too far gone for diet to do much.

420
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Speaker 8: Good, and so the death rate for people with pelagora

421
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Speaker 8: was just incredible. I think it's a condemnation of sort

422
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Speaker 8: of the Mississippi society rather than the asylum itself.

423
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Speaker 2: The death rate for pollagora won is incredible. I mean,

424
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Speaker 2: we've got it. It wiped out entire swaths of the South.

425
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Speaker 2: And we've also got a handle on the four d's,

426
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Speaker 2: the last two of which are dementia and death. Collagrapatients

427
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:16,199
Speaker 2: who were sent to the asylum were already on death's

428
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Speaker 2: door when they arrived.

429
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Speaker 6: Now overlay this.

430
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Speaker 2: Information with the asylum's high death rates with patients days

431
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Speaker 2: of just a few months before those patients passed. To

432
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:31,920
Speaker 2: be clear, I'm not saying that the Old Asylum was

433
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Speaker 2: a rose tinged haven altruistic to its core.

434
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Speaker 6: Neither is Laida.

435
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Speaker 8: There were people who committed suicide, and there were people

436
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 8: who were victims of violent patient on patient violence. I

437
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Speaker 8: am absolutely positive there were patients who are victims of

438
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 8: sexual violence of by the caregivers. I'm not saying that

439
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 8: didn't happen. I'm saying if we only focus on that,

440
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 8: we miss a lot of the story.

441
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 2: This context really complicated my understanding of the Old Asylum

442
00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:09,280
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, intentionally or not. The asylum

443
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 2: was more like a hospice for many of its patients.

444
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 2: You can't just draw a straight line from the high

445
00:29:14,760 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 2: death rates to mistreatment, poor medical care, poor treatment. Those

446
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 2: things happened, but there's zigzags along the way.

447
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 8: And I say thirty thousand patients approximately and about ten

448
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 8: thousand died based on the institutional records, and then twenty

449
00:29:31,320 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 8: five hundred patients were there when Whitfield opened, so that

450
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 8: means that seventeen thousand, five hundred patients approximately.

451
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 3: Were treated and released. We never hear those stories.

452
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:46,040
Speaker 8: I mean, I've run across maybe a couple of stories

453
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 8: about oh yeah, my great uncle went there, was at

454
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 8: the Old Asylum for a little while, and then he

455
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 8: came home and he was fine.

456
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 3: You know. I mean, we just don't get those stories.

457
00:29:58,520 --> 00:30:00,760
Speaker 2: There's no way for us to know why those stories

458
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 2: didn't get passed down. Could be its shame, or could

459
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:08,520
Speaker 2: be it's just too mundane to enter the family lore.

460
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't imagine sitting my kids down to

461
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 2: tell them about their great uncle's time and physical therapy

462
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:20,000
Speaker 2: and maybe those success stories or what helped family members

463
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:22,320
Speaker 2: at the time make peace with the choice to send

464
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 2: their loved ones to the Old Asylum, because remember, patients

465
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:30,720
Speaker 2: were rarely the ones admitting themselves. Somewhere along the line,

466
00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:33,920
Speaker 2: someone made the decision that they were better off in

467
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 2: the asylum. Maybe it was law enforcement, the judicial system,

468
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 2: or maybe it was family members grasping its straws.

469
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 8: I hear that a lot often people were admitted to

470
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 8: the asylum because they were a danger to themselves or others.

471
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 8: There's several stories about people setting fire to the house,

472
00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 8: and you know, you think about it, people go, well,

473
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 8: why was fire such a big deal, like well, because

474
00:31:01,520 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 8: that was the way houses were heated, and that was.

475
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 3: The way, that was the way people cooked.

476
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:12,800
Speaker 8: The danger of sort of being alone in a household

477
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:18,920
Speaker 8: when there's something going on with your mind with a

478
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 8: lot worse than probably than it is now. I do

479
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:26,080
Speaker 8: think it comes down to can I handle this, It's

480
00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 8: this in the best interest of my loved one to

481
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 8: keep this person at home or in the community. Is

482
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 8: it simply a way to marginalize the people that we

483
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:40,320
Speaker 8: don't want to look at in our community. Possibly. I mean,

484
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:43,600
Speaker 8: all of these things I think are at play. I

485
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 8: do hate the word marginalized though, and I'll tell you why. Yes,

486
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:53,560
Speaker 8: people were sent to the asylum. We are looking at

487
00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:58,240
Speaker 8: that from our perspective. Though, again, they came to the asylum.

488
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 8: At least initially, it was a place where there were resources.

489
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:07,240
Speaker 8: There was food, There was even entertainment. There were sidewalks

490
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 8: and landscaping and plants. The patients there, their lives didn't end,

491
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:16,520
Speaker 8: you know, they simply entered into a new community.

492
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 2: Regardless of why patients ended up in the asylum, their

493
00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 2: lives didn't end when they walked through those doors.

494
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:27,120
Speaker 6: They just changed.

495
00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:32,360
Speaker 2: To find those examples you just have to dig below

496
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 2: the surface that's coming up on under yazoo clay.

497
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:54,280
Speaker 7: So this is the soil that is getting sucked.

498
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:55,840
Speaker 3: In, Yes, the famous clay.

499
00:32:56,320 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 7: Oh yes, yes, it's terrible.

500
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 11: It's terrible, terrible dirt.

501
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 2: But we're in a building on the Medical Center's campus

502
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 2: that feels more like a warehouse. It's at least fifteen

503
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:13,200
Speaker 2: degrees colder than Jackson's April weather outside, and there's burnt

504
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:17,240
Speaker 2: orange yazoo clay all over the cement floor, burnt orange

505
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:19,640
Speaker 2: yazoo clay all over everything.

506
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:22,880
Speaker 6: Oh wow, Oh, this is not what I was expecting

507
00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 6: at all.

508
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 11: No, because so for one thing, it's very dirty because

509
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:30,959
Speaker 11: it's an active archaeological field lab. But it was originally

510
00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:34,480
Speaker 11: the laundry building for the hospital, and that's why all

511
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:36,960
Speaker 11: the big pipes and the giant boilers in the corner.

512
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,440
Speaker 2: We're here to meet doctor Jennifer Mack. You heard from

513
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 2: her briefly in the first episode. She's the lead bioarchaeologist

514
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:47,800
Speaker 2: of the Asylum Hill Project. Just in case you, like me,

515
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 2: are fuzzy on what that means.

516
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 11: Bioarchaeology is the study specifically of human remains from archaeological

517
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 11: contexts this is specifically the study of bear.

518
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:04,680
Speaker 2: Essentially, doctor Mack is small and wiry. She has long,

519
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:07,960
Speaker 2: dark hair, and, despite the gravity of her job, a

520
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:11,839
Speaker 2: light goofy sense of humor. We spoke inside, but it's

521
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:15,560
Speaker 2: easy to picture her out in the field. Since twenty seventeen,

522
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:19,560
Speaker 2: she's been elbowed deep and yazoo clay, working to map

523
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 2: out the cemetery and piece together the story of the

524
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:24,360
Speaker 2: asylum it belonged to.

525
00:34:25,040 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 11: It's easier for people to identify when there are a

526
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:30,960
Speaker 11: few artifacts, to tell a little bit about a person's

527
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:33,920
Speaker 11: personality and really be like, oh yeah, I got totally.

528
00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 3: I know that chick.

529
00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:37,920
Speaker 2: She walked us over to a series of folding tables

530
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 2: covered with brown paper. It looked like the setup for

531
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 2: a crawfish boil, but she'd use the paper to protect

532
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:45,399
Speaker 2: artifacts she'd pulled for us.

533
00:34:46,680 --> 00:34:50,800
Speaker 11: I cover everything because the air conditioning a heat blows

534
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 11: so hard and then blows dust over everything.

535
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:58,840
Speaker 2: The covering was totally a practical choice on Doctor Max's part.

536
00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:01,919
Speaker 2: It's the only to keep that yazoo clay dust from

537
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:06,120
Speaker 2: taking over again, but the effect paid for a delightful reveal.

538
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:09,520
Speaker 2: With each new object we came to, she picked up.

539
00:35:09,440 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 6: A tiny bit of gold.

540
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:13,880
Speaker 11: Oh look, there's a gold nugget. Why would there be

541
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:17,040
Speaker 11: such a tiny gold with the filling survived without the

542
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:17,879
Speaker 11: truth around it.

543
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:21,000
Speaker 2: As they peel back each layer of clay, doctor Mack

544
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:24,280
Speaker 2: and her team are exposing new insights into the people

545
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:27,520
Speaker 2: that were laid to rest in these graves and the

546
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:30,879
Speaker 2: people who entered them into life at the asylum.

547
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 11: I'd love to tell you about one particular pattern that

548
00:35:34,640 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 11: delights me, though it's not about the patients. Individuals were

549
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:42,319
Speaker 11: wrapped in a winding sheet that was pinned, and so

550
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:46,160
Speaker 11: we usually find two, three, four safety pins in a burial.

551
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:52,719
Speaker 11: There's a set of graves with why in my head,

552
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:57,960
Speaker 11: I call her like the compulsive nurse, someone who for

553
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:01,560
Speaker 11: a short time was preparing bodies for burial, was very

554
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:04,960
Speaker 11: finicky about the winding sheets. So instead of three or

555
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 11: four pins, there as many as eighteen safety pins, and

556
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 11: you could that is a personality. That's not a policy change, obviously,

557
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 11: it's a personality.

558
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:15,479
Speaker 3: There are five graves in a row that.

559
00:36:15,440 --> 00:36:18,479
Speaker 11: Have way too many pins, and then.

560
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 3: There are a few nearby.

561
00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:23,880
Speaker 11: There's a total of ten that I presume were prepared

562
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 11: by this same individual and then it stops, and we've

563
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:30,160
Speaker 11: gone pretty far out we have not found anymore.

564
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:33,479
Speaker 3: So either that person was.

565
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:38,799
Speaker 1: No longer asked to prepare bodies for burial, or someone said, hey,

566
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 1: quit wasting all the pins. You know, I'm not sure,

567
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:45,200
Speaker 1: but we have this little glimpse of one personality of

568
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:47,879
Speaker 1: a person who either worked at the asylum or could

569
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 1: have been a fellow patient.

570
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 2: The only part of the old asylum that's left on

571
00:36:56,120 --> 00:37:02,600
Speaker 2: Asylum Hill is the cemetery, and there's little to no documentation.

572
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:04,600
Speaker 6: Of or about these burials.

573
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:07,960
Speaker 2: So the story of the cemetery is being plucked from

574
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:11,400
Speaker 2: the clay grave by grave and peace by piece.

575
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:19,360
Speaker 11: As far as we know, we haven't had any sort

576
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 11: of documents, but of course it's early days in research.

577
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:29,000
Speaker 11: We haven't had any oral histories about families being able

578
00:37:29,040 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 11: to attend the burial but not able to claim the body.

579
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:39,640
Speaker 11: So my interpretation has been more that patients and staff

580
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 11: prepairing the bodies or doing the work of the actual

581
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 11: burial are the ones who had these expressions of affection.

582
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:49,280
Speaker 2: Because we do have each item that doctor Mack reveals

583
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:52,200
Speaker 2: beneath the butcher paper is something she and her team

584
00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:56,160
Speaker 2: have found while conducting the dig of the cemetery. That

585
00:37:56,280 --> 00:37:59,719
Speaker 2: means that each item was intentionally left with someone in

586
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:01,160
Speaker 2: their final resting place.

587
00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 11: See it's got the ribs on the back. And this

588
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 11: was found in Burial one fifty seven, right above where

589
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:12,040
Speaker 11: the kaffer had had decayed.

590
00:38:12,640 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 2: She's showing us a piece of broken tile more than

591
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:16,120
Speaker 2: a foot long.

592
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:19,400
Speaker 11: We're pretty sure we know where the tile came from

593
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:23,759
Speaker 11: in the nineteen twenty three superintendent's report that there's a

594
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 11: description of having remodeled all of the bathrooms in the

595
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:32,600
Speaker 11: asylum and replaced all the tile. So what's it doing

596
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 11: in the burial well? I had a thought.

597
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,040
Speaker 2: She brought that thought to the descendant, doctor Elizabeth West.

598
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:45,840
Speaker 2: Doctor West also has an impressive CV. She's a member

599
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 2: of the Asylum Hill Research Consortium and also the director

600
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 2: of academics for Georgia State University's Center for Studies on

601
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 2: Africa and Its Diaspora.

602
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,719
Speaker 11: And so I spoke with Elizabeth West, and it was

603
00:38:58,760 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 11: her opinion that she thought it could indeed be like

604
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:06,319
Speaker 11: an adaptive expression of the African American mortuary tradition of

605
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 11: placing ceramic or glass domestic items in the coffin or

606
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:15,640
Speaker 11: on top of the coffin at burial. And the reason

607
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:18,440
Speaker 11: this is so interesting is that the nature of this

608
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:21,680
Speaker 11: being a big piece of broken tile instead of like

609
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 11: a lovely cup and saucer sort of suggests that patients

610
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 11: were involved in the work of doing the grave digging

611
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 11: and burying the dead. Because if you're a patient and

612
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:37,040
Speaker 11: an asylum, you can't go to the cafeteria and say, hey,

613
00:39:37,040 --> 00:39:39,400
Speaker 11: I'd like a cup and saucer to bury with my friend.

614
00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 11: I don't think that would go over well. But you

615
00:39:43,160 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 11: can take what you can find, just like enslaved people

616
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 11: made use of what they could and use that to

617
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 11: express the same thing. So it's a maked solution. When

618
00:39:54,600 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 11: other materials aren't available and we've got this tile, we

619
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:01,840
Speaker 11: have an another piece of tile that was found in

620
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:06,440
Speaker 11: another grave. There was a broken crockery vessel in another grave,

621
00:40:06,680 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 11: and then a large rested can in another, so that

622
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 11: we found this pattern so far of objects that you

623
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:18,759
Speaker 11: could have pulled off of a discard pile. Looked very

624
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:21,759
Speaker 11: much like it had been placed there as it was

625
00:40:22,680 --> 00:40:24,719
Speaker 11: it was being pulled up by the back.

626
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:26,440
Speaker 3: Ho h.

627
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:27,000
Speaker 6: I love this.

628
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:31,600
Speaker 2: It's what doctor Didlake has been talking about that Southern

629
00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:34,759
Speaker 2: ethos that reverence for the grave has been with the

630
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 2: cemetery from the beginning.

631
00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:40,360
Speaker 11: Sometimes it is just an empty medicine bodel and a spoon.

632
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:43,879
Speaker 11: It doesn't have to be something elaborate. But I would

633
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:45,680
Speaker 11: think that if it was family coming from outside, it

634
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:50,200
Speaker 11: wouldn't be a broken piece of building material from the asylum.

635
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 2: Doctor mack leads us over to a pair of brown

636
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:58,400
Speaker 2: shoes that look almost like they've been sculpted from dirt.

637
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 11: So these were ye, there were alongside the body, and

638
00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 11: my interpretation is that it was an item that was

639
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 11: almost forgotten during the burial preparation. The body is already

640
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:18,400
Speaker 11: pinned up in the winding sheet, placed in the coffin,

641
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:21,799
Speaker 11: and oh wait, we forgot to put the boots on

642
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 11: the feet. Oh these were his favorite boots. Let's not

643
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:27,239
Speaker 11: forget these. So they were placed in the coffin because

644
00:41:27,239 --> 00:41:30,200
Speaker 11: it was important to the people who were doing the

645
00:41:30,200 --> 00:41:33,280
Speaker 11: burial to do that proper thing. But then couldn't access

646
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:36,319
Speaker 11: the feet anymore. At least that's my theory, because.

647
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:39,239
Speaker 2: She said she's also found dentures tucked inside the same way.

648
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 11: You can't reopen grandma's mouth, but you can make sure

649
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:47,719
Speaker 11: she doesn't go to heaven without her dentures.

650
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:53,400
Speaker 2: But sometimes the value of the objects doesn't require so

651
00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:54,319
Speaker 2: much guesswork.

652
00:41:55,400 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 11: These rings are more like what we commonly find, and

653
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 11: we have found a lot of thought, but rings are

654
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 11: the most common personal artifact that we find.

655
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:09,839
Speaker 2: She holds up a gold ring. I lean in and

656
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:11,040
Speaker 2: notice there's an inscription.

657
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:19,400
Speaker 11: This is one of my favorite artifacts. It appears to

658
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 11: be a solid gold wedding bands our eighteen carrot gold

659
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:27,759
Speaker 11: wedding band, and inscribed inside it says ever true to

660
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:34,400
Speaker 11: the which is very sweet. And even though it's a

661
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:37,719
Speaker 11: small ring, based on the width of thinking that it

662
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:40,759
Speaker 11: was on the hand of a male, but unfortunately the

663
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:44,319
Speaker 11: skeletal remains were almost non existent in this grave. And

664
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:47,279
Speaker 11: I really like this artifact, not just because to me,

665
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:50,400
Speaker 11: I feel like it's a symbol of a truly loving marriage,

666
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 11: because if you're just having to marry somebody, you don't

667
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 11: get that engraved in a ring, right, or maybe you do,

668
00:42:56,719 --> 00:43:01,760
Speaker 11: but also because it combats the assumption that people make that, oh,

669
00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 11: everyone who worked in the asylum was evil and they

670
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 11: would have stolen anything valuable that the patients had. Obviously

671
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 11: that's not the case, because this is a very valuable

672
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:11,600
Speaker 11: ring that got interred with this person.

673
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:14,840
Speaker 2: It's one of those objects that doesn't just point to

674
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:19,440
Speaker 2: the life that patients lived inside the asylum.

675
00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:20,680
Speaker 6: But the life they had lived on the outside.

676
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 2: I could tell from the way doctor Mack looked at

677
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 2: this ring, the way she held it, that it was unique.

678
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:32,560
Speaker 2: It seemed personal. And then I remembered something I'd noticed

679
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:36,160
Speaker 2: when we walked in that day, a tattoo on doctor

680
00:43:36,200 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 2: Mack's foot. May I ask about your tattoo because it

681
00:43:39,960 --> 00:43:45,239
Speaker 2: says ever true it does it does, ever true to THEE,

682
00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 2: just like that ring.

683
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:50,239
Speaker 11: Yes, I'm going to try to tell the story. So

684
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 11: that ring was found by my hust Oh, I can't

685
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:56,880
Speaker 11: do it. Hold on, sorry, Normally I'm not like this,

686
00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:04,760
Speaker 11: and I can tell everybody about my tattoo. So my husband,

687
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:07,480
Speaker 11: Dustin Clark, was the crew chief of this project, and

688
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 11: he's the one that found the gold ring that said

689
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:10,680
Speaker 11: ever true to THEE.

690
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:11,760
Speaker 3: And he was very.

691
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:13,759
Speaker 11: Proud of it, and he kept telling everyone that it

692
00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:16,440
Speaker 11: was the best artifact, and everyone who thought they found

693
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:18,680
Speaker 11: something good, he said, no, no, it's not as good

694
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:21,840
Speaker 11: as the ring that I found. So, unfortunately he passed

695
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 11: away in August. So I have a tattoo on my

696
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,319
Speaker 11: foot with two coffins, one for him, one for me,

697
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 11: and a snake because he loved speakes, and a skull

698
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:34,680
Speaker 11: because that's what I do for a living. And then

699
00:44:34,719 --> 00:44:36,719
Speaker 11: we've got the ring on there, and then it says

700
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:39,280
Speaker 11: ever true to thee, just like the ring that he found.

701
00:44:45,920 --> 00:44:49,120
Speaker 2: And so doctor Matt continues working on the Asylum Hill site,

702
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:53,600
Speaker 2: uncovering new artifacts and new stories of the last people

703
00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:57,880
Speaker 2: who touched them. There's a forward motion through the grief

704
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 2: that seemed to be through Loan for each of the

705
00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:04,840
Speaker 2: descendants we spoke with as well. Even if what you

706
00:45:04,960 --> 00:45:08,920
Speaker 2: learn isn't positive, there's Catharsis in discovery.

707
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 6: All this born out.

708
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:16,279
Speaker 2: Of a place we associate with shadows, shame and secrecy,

709
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 2: and still this is a place that defies definition and

710
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 2: it should.

711
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:32,359
Speaker 8: When I first started this project, and I think the

712
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:35,640
Speaker 8: goals of the CONSORTI members, the scholars who are involved

713
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 8: from the beginning, certainly Doctor Didlake was to sort of

714
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:44,239
Speaker 8: paint a portrait of what life was like at the Asylum,

715
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:47,160
Speaker 8: and unfortunately, I think.

716
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:49,200
Speaker 3: That's very, very difficult to do.

717
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 8: And when we try to sort of paint a portrait

718
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:58,240
Speaker 8: of what life was like, or you create a picture

719
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 8: of what life was like at the Assida Number one.

720
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:03,960
Speaker 8: It was different from one year to the next, one

721
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:09,600
Speaker 8: decade to the next. It was different depending on your condition.

722
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:14,120
Speaker 8: I'm not naive enough to think that the black patients

723
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 8: were treated as well as the white patients, But I

724
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:22,160
Speaker 8: also think sort of dismissing the superintendents and the people

725
00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 8: who work there because they were clearly entrenched in systemic racism. Basically,

726
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:34,760
Speaker 8: I think we if we simply ignore the stories because

727
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:37,359
Speaker 8: of that, we miss a lot of the story. So

728
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:42,080
Speaker 8: I've tried to have an open mind about possibly, I mean,

729
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:45,759
Speaker 8: were there was there anything positive about the fact that,

730
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 8: you know, black patients were admitted there and treated there.

731
00:46:51,040 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 8: And I think I think in some ways trying to

732
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:58,680
Speaker 8: paint these really broad strokes is less respectful to the

733
00:46:58,760 --> 00:46:59,920
Speaker 8: patients than we should be.

734
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if there's one thing we know about Laida

735
00:47:03,600 --> 00:47:06,799
Speaker 2: and the rest of the Asylum Hill Project, they're going

736
00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 2: to err on the side of respect for doctor West.

737
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:15,360
Speaker 2: Going beyond those broad brushstrokes is key. Brushing the dirt

738
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 2: off her great uncle Hillman's story finally gave her insight

739
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:19,880
Speaker 2: to her own grandfather.

740
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:25,880
Speaker 12: I understand and appreciate myself and my family in ways

741
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:31,040
Speaker 12: that I had not before the pain of finding an

742
00:47:31,080 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 12: ancestor not too far back in the path. This was

743
00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:39,960
Speaker 12: a person who my grandfather farmed with. This was a

744
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:44,800
Speaker 12: person who helped shape my grandfather, who then shaped my mother,

745
00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:48,400
Speaker 12: who then shaped me. So it's not like, you know,

746
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:52,960
Speaker 12: it's not like some obscure figure. The place itself, the

747
00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:58,439
Speaker 12: asylum itself, and the taboo of mental health how we

748
00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:01,319
Speaker 12: look at that in this country. All of that is

749
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:06,719
Speaker 12: I'm sure like devastating to think about, But I'm not

750
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:13,960
Speaker 12: overly disturbed by that, because you know, health issues are

751
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:17,799
Speaker 12: health issues, whether they're mental or physical. And you know,

752
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:22,160
Speaker 12: just because you know people suffer from mental health does

753
00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:28,200
Speaker 12: not mean their lives are not important and phenomenal. And

754
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 12: when I think about encountering this person through the asylum

755
00:48:34,320 --> 00:48:38,080
Speaker 12: and then understanding there that there are thousands of more

756
00:48:38,239 --> 00:48:43,160
Speaker 12: stories like that here, it's just, you know, it's mind.

757
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:50,799
Speaker 2: Boggling, thousands more stories all waiting to be uncovered and

758
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:56,080
Speaker 2: waiting to be found. What does it mean to find someone?

759
00:48:56,840 --> 00:49:01,879
Speaker 2: Once they've been found, what done? Will they fade back

760
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:06,280
Speaker 2: into the rusted orange of the Yazoo Clay Well, Jackson

761
00:49:06,440 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 2: makes space for them.

762
00:49:09,200 --> 00:49:13,279
Speaker 6: That's next on Under Yazoo Clay Well.

763
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 7: As soon as Jessica and I walked down the hallway

764
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:20,680
Speaker 7: and saw the sign, I just burst into tears. I

765
00:49:20,719 --> 00:49:22,520
Speaker 7: really didn't expect to do that. I mean, it was

766
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:25,520
Speaker 7: just a side. So her brother said, when are you

767
00:49:25,520 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 7: even bringing that out?

768
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:29,560
Speaker 3: And he said, I don't know.

769
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:33,000
Speaker 12: Every time I go, she gets further and further away

770
00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:33,440
Speaker 12: from me.

771
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:38,200
Speaker 8: And then yeah, and then like I was saying, you

772
00:49:38,239 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 8: can make the end sort of come to about this point.

773
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:45,680
Speaker 3: Perfect that it'll be fine.

774
00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:50,680
Speaker 2: Under Yazoo Clay is executive produced by the Mississippi Museum

775
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:53,719
Speaker 2: of Art in partnership with pod People. It's hosted by

776
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 2: me Laris and Campbell and written and produced by Rebecca

777
00:49:56,719 --> 00:50:00,520
Speaker 2: Shassan and myself with help from Angela Yee and Amy Mash,

778
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:03,560
Speaker 2: with editing and sound design by Morgan Fuse and Erica

779
00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 2: Wong and thanks to Blue Dot Sessions for music. Special

780
00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:09,960
Speaker 2: thanks to Betsy Bradley at the Mississippi Museum of Art,

781
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:12,799
Speaker 2: as well as Leida Gibson at the Center for Bioethics

782
00:50:12,840 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 2: and Medical Humanities at the University of Mississippi. Medical Center,

783
00:50:16,360 --> 00:50:18,680
Speaker 2: visit Jackson and Jay and Deny Stein