Speaker 1: And the patients would come out on the front lawn.
Speaker 2: But as the city moved that way, they had to
Speaker 2: bar the poor chests because they became a buggy problem.
Speaker 3: Well, they would get out and show out on the
Speaker 3: lawn and people would stop riding around.
Speaker 4: Oh no, no horse than Puggy.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the Old Asylum's life, it grew,
Speaker 2: Jackson grew around it, its story unspooled threads, joining the
Speaker 2: tapestry of ever expanding daily life in central Mississippi. Back
Speaker 2: at the State Hospital Museum, Donna Brown and Kathy Denton
Speaker 2: showed us around a room full of photos and memorabilia
Speaker 2: from the Old Asylum.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of stories too.
Speaker 6: If you look closely at the picture, you can see
Speaker 6: there's a road that turned here in circles up close
Speaker 6: to the building Sunday afternoons and Jackson, it was a
Speaker 6: common fun thing to do to go picnic on the
Speaker 6: grounds and watch the crazy people.
Speaker 2: After the Old Asylum shuddered its doors when its buildings
Speaker 2: were torn down in the fifties, the stories died down
Speaker 2: for a bit too, But with the rediscovery of the
Speaker 2: Asylum Hills Cemetery, the lore is also coming back to
Speaker 2: Life Asylum Hills. Lady Gibson even has her own well.
Speaker 7: The first time I heard about the Old Asylum was
Speaker 7: from my mother. My mother is still with us, she
Speaker 7: is ninety five years old, but she remembers as a
Speaker 7: child driving through the gravel driveway in front of the
Speaker 7: asylum on Sunday afternoons and waving at the patients. We've
Speaker 7: had lots of people who've come from the community and said, yeah,
Speaker 7: oh yeah, that was like the place to go.
Speaker 2: For the most part, the stories that survive are the
Speaker 2: ones that lean into the Southern Gothic of it all.
Speaker 2: Here's Billy Wayne's cousin.
Speaker 1: I knew that the Old Asylum was there because I've
Speaker 1: talked to friends that are a little older than I
Speaker 1: am that remember the asylum. I remember one of my
Speaker 1: friends I never will forget. He would walk past it
Speaker 1: some times at night and hear those poor souls. I
Speaker 1: remember that's expression he used. I could hear those poor
Speaker 1: souls wailing in the asylum.
Speaker 2: The final years of the Asylum did not leave a
Speaker 2: great impression on Jackson. That shifting Yazoo Clay had done
Speaker 2: a number on the Foundation, which was then doing a
Speaker 2: number on the walls and ceilings. Plaster was literally crumbling
Speaker 2: onto the patient buds, but repairs were out of the question.
Speaker 2: Any state funds flowed to the new state hospital being built,
Speaker 2: the one out in Whitfield.
Speaker 7: Whitfield was funded by the legislature in nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 7: Then the depression happened. Then there were shortages of everything,
Speaker 7: you know, and so the building of Whitfield and the
Speaker 7: opening of Whitfield was delayed until nineteen thirty five. So
Speaker 7: you had from nineteen twenty six to nineteen thirty five
Speaker 7: when they were trying not to put any more money
Speaker 7: into this building that was literally condemned by the time
Speaker 7: the patients moved out.
Speaker 2: When the new State Hospital Whitfield opened its stores, the
Speaker 2: old asylum shut its own and there wasn't a lick
Speaker 2: of overlap between the two.
Speaker 8: The old asylum closed, Field opened, completely new staff, completely
Speaker 8: new department of the Mississippi government. It was not like
Speaker 8: it was a legacy institution. The last twenty five hundred
Speaker 8: patients from here went to Whitfield, but that's the only
Speaker 8: transfer that happened. It was a brand new operation. We
Speaker 8: had this huge institution that operated for eighty years and
Speaker 8: then it remained derelict for twenty and then the University
Speaker 8: Medical Center comes on and there's no transfer of institutional memory.
Speaker 8: The buildings were torn down, the cemetery remained derelict up
Speaker 8: on the hill, unattended, forgotten, unused, unneeded.
Speaker 2: Whitfield was about as blank of a slate as you
Speaker 2: could find. If there were a way for the state
Speaker 2: to sanction forgetting, this was it.
Speaker 8: Many of us, most of us in medicine, have sufficient egos,
Speaker 8: and we all believe that history starts with our arrival.
Speaker 8: So the medical school opened and it was churning from
Speaker 8: the very beginning, patient care and research and education, and
Speaker 8: no time to look back. And we're building this brand new,
Speaker 8: modern medical center and we're looking forward. We have no
Speaker 8: interest in preserving old, crumbling history.
Speaker 2: Well except the old crumbling history is right there, a
Speaker 2: cemetery taking up twelve acres of this town. So the
Speaker 2: real question is what kind of space will Jackson make
Speaker 2: for the people interred there. I'm Larison Campbell and this
Speaker 2: is under Yazoo Clay. When we sat down with Leta
Speaker 2: for one of our mini chats, her phone rang mid interview.
Speaker 2: Most days that would be a pretty big bummer, but
Speaker 2: not this time. The person on the other end of
Speaker 2: the line was Kimberly Jackson, a descendant.
Speaker 7: Hey, Kimberly, I am fine. So I was calling you
Speaker 7: because I have found some information about SINNI and I'm
Speaker 7: going to send you the forms that you need to
Speaker 7: fill out to get it. It's some patient records and anyway,
Speaker 7: it's pretty self explanatory. But I also wanted to ask you.
Speaker 2: Kim is a lot of things to a lot of people.
Speaker 2: She's a school counselor right now pre k.
Speaker 9: Through second grade. They thank you a superstar. Every day
Speaker 9: you is like walking on a red carpet every day.
Speaker 2: She's a caregiver for her mother, for her aunt, and
Speaker 2: for her uncle. Chem is dedicated to doing it all.
Speaker 2: That was clear even when we were trying to pin
Speaker 2: her down for an interview.
Speaker 9: Time there's a yes, there is actually a count on
Speaker 9: the third floor, but.
Speaker 5: I mean it's oh really That might be.
Speaker 2: The day we met her, she'd driven a little over
Speaker 2: an hour from her home in Carthage, Mississippi. She was
Speaker 2: in Jackson to bring her aunt and uncle to their
Speaker 2: doctor's appointments, and so that's where we did the interview
Speaker 2: on a couch outside the doctor's office, right next to
Speaker 2: the vending machines and the elevator bank. So if you
Speaker 2: hear a clank or a ding, no, you know this
Speaker 2: is good. And that might be the fourth floor up there,
Speaker 2: in which case it doesn't look like they have as
Speaker 2: much area as we do. So perfect, okay, So thank
Speaker 2: you for making this drive.
Speaker 9: Yeah, welcome out.
Speaker 5: Like I said, my aunt and uncle and they're on
Speaker 5: the third floor. Yeah, they're right in there. Oh that's perfect. Okay, great, and.
Speaker 2: My aunt's she swooped in for a hug.
Speaker 8: Hello.
Speaker 2: I clocked her light pink long sleeve shirt with the
Speaker 2: logan love yourself. It's abundantly clear that to Kim, family
Speaker 2: is everything. Almost straight from the moment we arrived, she
Speaker 2: wax poetic about a whole slew of relatives from her
Speaker 2: grandmother's dating history.
Speaker 9: One gentleman from the community said, I'm going to walk
Speaker 9: you home, but let me run out here to get
Speaker 9: a lamp.
Speaker 2: You know, to her great uncle's fashion choices.
Speaker 9: You wore these nickobaccas and thought that he was looking
Speaker 9: real shop with these Nicobocca pants, you know. So they
Speaker 9: would laugh and they jogan, But you think you something,
Speaker 9: But these Nicobaca's on you know what.
Speaker 2: The cloth of her life is made up of these
Speaker 2: memories of these people. But like all the descendants we
Speaker 2: spoke to, there was that familiar blank spot, a rent
Speaker 2: in the fabric. So if you would, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: tell tell us about your it's your great.
Speaker 5: Grandmother, right, So do you know about her? Uh? Bits
Speaker 5: and pieces?
Speaker 9: So uh, since all of this has occurred, I found
Speaker 9: out a little bit more. Uh so I always we
Speaker 9: were always told her name was Zenny. She married my grandfather,
Speaker 9: Monroe g and they.
Speaker 5: Had four children.
Speaker 9: They had three boys and then a girl, which was
Speaker 9: my grandmother Marie. So they lived in Conway, and my
Speaker 9: great grandmother was born and raised in another community in
Speaker 9: Leek County called Pilgrim Rest. And so all of a
Speaker 9: lot of her you know, family members uh are buried
Speaker 9: in the Pilgrim Rest Church cemetery.
Speaker 5: Except for her, But I'll get to that.
Speaker 2: Pilgrim Rest was a small community not too far away.
Speaker 2: Zenny's whole family was nearby. But then things went south
Speaker 2: for Zenny. Her mom died. It shook everyone in the family,
Speaker 2: but no one more than Zenny, a young mother herself.
Speaker 9: And as the story goes, when her mother passed away,
Speaker 9: she became, I guess, so despondent with grief that she
Speaker 9: slowly started to her mental health started to decline. My
Speaker 9: grandmother always said that she had a nervous breakdown.
Speaker 2: Kim's grandmother was Jenny's youngest child, not even ten years
Speaker 2: old yet.
Speaker 9: One cousin said that she would leave home. She would
Speaker 9: put my grandma on a hip and take off walking,
Speaker 9: and you know, people be like, know where is it?
Speaker 9: You know, looking for where is it? And she would
Speaker 9: hit a ride going to Pilgrim Rest. She would just
Speaker 9: take off, woo, did a ride, go to Pilgrim Rest,
Speaker 9: you know, hitch ragg get on, you know, and come back.
Speaker 9: They said she'd always come back, She'd always come back.
Speaker 9: My great grandfather was able to get her admitted to
Speaker 9: Asylum Hill.
Speaker 2: But Kem's great grandfathers and his husband, Monroe, remained devoted.
Speaker 2: His wife was his wife in sickness or in health.
Speaker 9: According to my cousins, my great grandfather would to visit
Speaker 9: her at least three times.
Speaker 5: And that must have been a hard track.
Speaker 9: Exactly that Now that touched me because when I think
Speaker 9: about now, this is Mississippi in the nineteen late night
Speaker 9: the late teens, you know, him traveling either by wagon
Speaker 9: or a very.
Speaker 5: A model TA kind of a car.
Speaker 9: Who knows, you know, to think about him getting back
Speaker 9: and forth three times.
Speaker 5: Or he loved her. You can't tell me you didn't
Speaker 5: love her.
Speaker 9: He was if he was determined to visit her three times.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he meant to bring her home.
Speaker 9: Until he for some reason, thought that he couldn't. He
Speaker 9: and her family were thinking, of course, that this was
Speaker 9: going to be a short term stay, you know. And
Speaker 9: so her brother said to my great grandfather, said, when.
Speaker 5: Are you bringing this inning home? And he said, I
Speaker 5: don't know.
Speaker 9: Every time I go, she gets further and further away
Speaker 9: from me. While she was at asylum, hell, she passed away.
Speaker 9: So as far as I know, it was through a telegram.
Speaker 9: Is how he found out that she passed. As far
Speaker 9: as I know, he was not able to see her
Speaker 9: before she was buried. You know, they thinking she's going
Speaker 9: somewhere for a little while, and she never comes back.
Speaker 9: You know, I my heart, my heart has gone out
Speaker 9: to them, and I can tear her up now thinking
Speaker 9: about that that. You know, you're thinking she you know
Speaker 9: she'll be back. You know she's gonna get some help
Speaker 9: and she'll be back. And so my grandmother wasn't even
Speaker 9: she wasn't ten, and the last memory she had of
Speaker 9: her mother was her making her a birthday cake.
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Speaker 2: That's MS Museum art dot org. The Southern ethos, the
Speaker 2: reverence for the grave ran deep in Kim's family. Cemeteries
Speaker 2: have been part of her life since childhood.
Speaker 5: My grandma was being on visiting cemeteries. It was it
Speaker 5: was a whole thing for.
Speaker 9: Them to have the churches to get together and clean
Speaker 9: the cemetery. You know, mowld the lawn of the cemetery
Speaker 9: changed out the flowers.
Speaker 5: That was the whole thing. That was a day set
Speaker 5: aside to do that kind of thing.
Speaker 9: Look, I'm we going, I went to I'm a little kid,
Speaker 9: I'm at all the funerals. It felt like, you know,
Speaker 9: you know, there was there was always obituaries and always,
Speaker 9: of course, like I said, stories to be told, and
Speaker 9: but hers was always that sense of unknown.
Speaker 2: Kim's grandmother had no grave to point to, just one memory,
Speaker 2: one story of her mother she could pass down to
Speaker 2: her own children.
Speaker 9: It was a happy memory, but there was only one
Speaker 9: memory of her baking this cake for her birthday. And
Speaker 9: to then go from that to news of her, of
Speaker 9: her passing, it's just just a lot of gaps and
Speaker 9: a sense of a little bit sense of longing.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 9: She would never really dwell on it too long, Like
Speaker 9: if she mentioned her, she would say a little something
Speaker 9: and that was it. So she wasn't she didn't ever
Speaker 9: shy away from it. But there was just always this
Speaker 9: sense of that's all there is, you know, that like
Speaker 9: there was this is the end of the store, there's
Speaker 9: nothing else but love.
Speaker 5: But what Twain's are saying.
Speaker 10: I mean, that's really interesting because I feel like we've
Speaker 10: talked to so many there, you know, a fair number
Speaker 10: of people at this point who had relatives who were
Speaker 10: in there, And it's kind of the reactions I've heard
Speaker 10: have been a little bit different in that I think
Speaker 10: there's a lot of shame associated.
Speaker 5: But they never had it. They never tried to keep
Speaker 5: it a secret.
Speaker 9: It wasn't a secret that she went to Whitfield, as
Speaker 9: they called it.
Speaker 5: It was never they never did.
Speaker 9: Never did they, And I will say that, yeah, it
Speaker 9: wasn't something they tried to had.
Speaker 5: They were always very upfront about it.
Speaker 2: Her family never tried to hide her. But Zenny got
Speaker 2: lost anyhow. Part of the confusion was bureaucratic. In Mississippi
Speaker 2: these days, when people say asylum, they mean Whitfield, the
Speaker 2: current state hospital. Ken and her family, like many Mississippians,
Speaker 2: never even knew there was an old asylum in Jackson.
Speaker 9: As time went on, they called it Whitfield. So in
Speaker 9: our minds, we're thinking that she was buried where Whitville
Speaker 9: is out in Pearl somewhere.
Speaker 2: So when Kim went to search for her great grandmother's records,
Speaker 2: she contacted Whitfield. Every time they just say they had
Speaker 2: no records of Zenny because Zenny was never there for Kim.
Speaker 2: It felt like the asylum had just swallowed her hole,
Speaker 2: but Zenny hadn't vanished. She was closer than anyone knew.
Speaker 9: My grandmother attended Tougaloo, So when I think about it,
Speaker 9: she was not that far from where her mother was buried,
Speaker 9: and she had no idea, no idea that that's where
Speaker 9: she was buried.
Speaker 2: Tugalu College is in Jackson, just six miles from the
Speaker 2: old asylum, and for decades, Zenni's daughter and then her
Speaker 2: granddaughter and finally her great granddaughter has right by that
Speaker 2: cemetery like ships in the night until remember back in
Speaker 2: episode two that pr road show that the Asylum Hill
Speaker 2: project went on the one where they spoken rotary clubs
Speaker 2: and put out newspaper.
Speaker 9: Adds, I see an ad in the Carthaginian, which is
Speaker 9: our local newspaper, and it mentioned that the following people were.
Speaker 5: Believed to have been buried.
Speaker 9: At Asylum Hill, and I see her name, and so
Speaker 9: it had a contact number. It turned out to be lighter,
Speaker 9: and so that's how I found out.
Speaker 5: You have a watch roots. You know how Alex Halen.
Speaker 9: When he made it to Africa and he went to
Speaker 9: the he went.
Speaker 5: To the to the village where Cooter Kintate was born,
Speaker 5: and he was like, I found you. You know, That's
Speaker 5: how I felt. I was like, oh my god, we
Speaker 5: found her.
Speaker 9: I found him, and I let my family know, you know,
Speaker 9: and you know the whole you know.
Speaker 5: It was like, oh my go I told Mama first. I
Speaker 5: told her.
Speaker 9: I was like, you know, Grandma's in the name in
Speaker 9: the paper, you know, and uh yeah, So it was
Speaker 9: I felt a sense of especially a sense of relief.
Speaker 9: But just to know that, you know, it's just I
Speaker 9: was just so it was just mind boggling that to
Speaker 9: think that, to see her name in print, to know that,
Speaker 9: oh there's more to the story. I'm able to fill
Speaker 9: in the gaps, just mind blowing because think about this,
Speaker 9: by this time, my mama was in her late seventies,
Speaker 9: you know, finding all of this out, and so, like
Speaker 9: I said, all of a sud sudden zen, it went
Speaker 9: from being you know, a story to you a real
Speaker 9: you know, a person you think about, a person with
Speaker 9: a whole entire life, you know, not just you know,
Speaker 9: creating a home life with you know, her grandfather and
Speaker 9: you know, having my you know, because basically it was
Speaker 9: when they when they heard of Grandma's in it. It was
Speaker 9: the same way she told it to us. You know,
Speaker 9: there was there was no extra stories, you know what
Speaker 9: I'm saying. And so to go from wow, so you
Speaker 9: know there was an actual they go from being her
Speaker 9: being admitted to the hospital to her dying. No no
Speaker 9: news of what happened while she was.
Speaker 5: There, no nothing.
Speaker 2: What is it about connecting like these dots?
Speaker 10: What what does it as the person who's still alive today?
Speaker 5: Like what does it give you? And for lack of
Speaker 5: a better word, completeness.
Speaker 9: My people always talked about their family, always, both sides,
Speaker 9: you know, always was all of this talk about remember
Speaker 9: what grandma did, Remember what uncle so and so did,
Speaker 9: her cousin so and so. There was always these stories
Speaker 9: always and when it came and so it makes me,
Speaker 9: like I said, it makes me give a a sense
Speaker 9: of completion in a way finding zen it and I
Speaker 9: just really feel like, ah, I got it.
Speaker 5: This is what this is? This it it it It
Speaker 5: feels me.
Speaker 9: To finally know that there was an end to her
Speaker 9: story where the hap air said there was an end,
Speaker 9: because it didn't. It was just such a mystery, such
Speaker 9: a mystery as to what happened to her, well just
Speaker 9: about everybody else, you know. You know, there was a
Speaker 9: beginning to the story and there's an end at the store,
Speaker 9: and they had they have the whole in, you know,
Speaker 9: the whole middle. That wasn't that with her, That was
Speaker 9: not that with her.
Speaker 2: Come has something a lot of other descendants have been
Speaker 2: looking for. She can just about point to the spot
Speaker 2: where Zenny is buried.
Speaker 9: There's a grove of trees and the grassy area. If
Speaker 9: I'm not mistaken, that's where she would have been buried.
Speaker 9: I ride by there now and think, you know, she's there.
Speaker 9: I think about it as her burial place. You know,
Speaker 9: when I drive by, I look out there and I think,
Speaker 9: you know there you you know, there she is. And
Speaker 9: that's what my grandmother and her siblings did not ever have,
Speaker 9: was a sense of there she is, or we can
Speaker 9: go out there and visit her when we would like to,
Speaker 9: or drive by.
Speaker 5: They did not have that sense at all. They never
Speaker 5: knew where she was.
Speaker 2: So come checks in with her. She fills Anny in
Speaker 2: on what's become of her family.
Speaker 9: Now, somebody they your children will raise, would love, so
Speaker 9: you know, don't think that you know, they were just
Speaker 9: out there in the world left to their own devices. No,
Speaker 9: they were raised in the manner you would have want
Speaker 9: them to be raised.
Speaker 5: They were loved in the way that you will want
Speaker 5: them to be loved. We did not ever forget about you.
Speaker 9: You always loved, you always missed. We just did not forget.
Speaker 9: But now we have found.
Speaker 2: You come as the poster child for what the Asylum
Speaker 2: Hell Project is hoping to pull off.
Speaker 8: I will tell this story anywhere I can. I would
Speaker 8: be happy to. I think the more we get the
Speaker 8: word out, the deeper our engagement will be with the community,
Speaker 8: the more transparent will be, and the more stories that
Speaker 8: will hear.
Speaker 2: Back by the way, Doctor Deadlake says that any descendants
Speaker 2: who may be listening can contact the Asylum Hill Project
Speaker 2: through its website Asylum Hill dot org.
Speaker 8: We'll be happy to talk to them, describe what we're doing,
Speaker 8: engage with them, see if they would like to give
Speaker 8: us a name to look for.
Speaker 2: But of course, the Asylum Hill Project isn't just about
Speaker 2: connecting descendants with information about their loved ones. It's about
Speaker 2: that land, the land that the medical center needs to
Speaker 2: build more vital medical infrastructure, the land currently occupied by
Speaker 2: thousands of former patients, as they've talked to more people
Speaker 2: like him. The folks at Asylum Hill have begun to
Speaker 2: formulate a plan, but it's one that will take time.
Speaker 2: There's the project of sorting archived patient records.
Speaker 7: I think I estimated that it would take five years,
Speaker 7: given our current staffing, to just get everything indexed and separated.
Speaker 2: And of course the cemetery excavations, the process of removing
Speaker 2: the remains to make space for the medical center's expansion.
Speaker 3: In an ideal world, for instance, if we don't have
Speaker 3: constant flooding which always slows us down in Mississippi, and
Speaker 3: if we had an appropriate crew size, still like six
Speaker 3: or seven more years. And that's just for the excavation
Speaker 3: that it's not the analysis. If there are let's say,
Speaker 3: seven thousand graves.
Speaker 2: We've talked a lot about final resting places here. That's
Speaker 2: what cemeteries are, right, except for this one. An important
Speaker 2: thing to realize is that if we say there's seven
Speaker 2: thousand graves, that at the end of all this there
Speaker 2: will be seven thousand sets of remains removed from the clay.
Speaker 2: And that brings up an awkward truth. There's a fine
Speaker 2: line between being taken care of, treated like a burden.
Speaker 2: It's hard not to worry that what these former patients are,
Speaker 2: more than anything else, is in the way. And if
Speaker 2: there's one clear takeaway from talking with descendants, it's that
Speaker 2: the first and foremost duty of care owed to these
Speaker 2: patients is just respect, and sometimes that looks like acknowledgment,
Speaker 2: which doctor Didlake says is a part of what will
Speaker 2: happen next.
Speaker 8: We're going to build a memorial on campus and not
Speaker 8: re enter these individuals. That is administratively much more efficient.
Speaker 8: It's also makes those remains available to any wonderful technologies
Speaker 8: that are out over the horizon that can help identify
Speaker 8: these individuals and offer them to families for traditional burial.
Speaker 2: So what does it mean to make remains means more available. Well,
Speaker 2: for starters, they're not going back into the ground anywhere. Instead,
Speaker 2: the Asylum Hill Project will build a standalone mausoleum to
Speaker 2: house the remains above ground. This is partially in service
Speaker 2: of the budget. If they wanted to rebury the remains,
Speaker 2: they'd have to buy more land to do it on,
Speaker 2: but it's also in service of the core aim of
Speaker 2: the Asylum Hill Project to learn all they can about
Speaker 2: the old Asylum, including its patients. This whole thing is
Speaker 2: part of a university after all, and keeping everything above
Speaker 2: ground does keep the remains more available for research. There
Speaker 2: is the specter of spectacle with this plan. So Asylum
Speaker 2: Hill did what it does best. They went out to
Speaker 2: the descendant community and got their buy in for this
Speaker 2: stage of the project too.
Speaker 7: Amazingly, I'm not sure any of us expected that we
Speaker 7: will be at this point to but here we are.
Speaker 7: And I mean there are people who I mean, there
Speaker 7: are descendants who have said, you know what, I don't
Speaker 7: like the idea of my relative being disturbed, but if
Speaker 7: she has to be, then this is the way I
Speaker 7: want it.
Speaker 8: Tone just the level of positivity of that plan has
Speaker 8: been stunning, both in the community at large and in
Speaker 8: the descendant community and our community advisory board. So we're
Speaker 8: very happy about that. So that paradigm is acceptable.
Speaker 2: That paradigm is acceptable. It all ties back to that
Speaker 2: Southern ethos, because maybe, just maybe building a new home
Speaker 2: for these remains in the heart of the city is
Speaker 2: the best chance for finally reintegrating these former patients with
Speaker 2: their community, interweaving the threads of their lives once again
Speaker 2: with the fabric of the city.
Speaker 1: I say, people that don't appreciate and enjoy history. I said, well,
Speaker 1: we'll relegate them to the Dead Soul Society. You can't
Speaker 1: explain it to them.
Speaker 5: They just don't.
Speaker 1: They just don't, you know, And I don't try to
Speaker 1: explain it there.
Speaker 5: But it's a fascinating thing.
Speaker 9: I feel at peace knowing that I found her. You know,
Speaker 9: I felt they send some peace knowing that refounder. So
Speaker 9: right now I'm just you know, living in that peace.
Speaker 5: The asylum has for me.
Speaker 11: It has become this almost like a I guess, a
Speaker 11: historical shrine in my mind, because I look at Hillman,
Speaker 11: that's one story, and you multiplied that by, you know,
Speaker 11: a few thousand, and then you think about what it
Speaker 11: would mean to capture the stories and how we can
Speaker 11: arrive at how that leads us to a sense of
Speaker 11: our history, because you know, I don't feel like this
Speaker 11: is just my family's history. I you know, it's a
Speaker 11: bigger history.
Speaker 12: And my brother passed away two years ago some kind
Speaker 12: to kind of carry on what he had started. It
Speaker 12: was very important, a lot more important to him all
Speaker 12: those years that he spent on it that it was
Speaker 12: to me. I was just a kid, and I didn't
Speaker 12: didn't know, but as you get older, you know that means.
Speaker 5: More to you.
Speaker 12: And so I'm sure he's there with my granddad saying
Speaker 12: where to go.
Speaker 13: Brother.
Speaker 14: I just burst into tears. I really didn't expect to
Speaker 14: do that.
Speaker 5: I hadn't even gotten into it.
Speaker 15: But that's what you're supposed to do when you hear
Speaker 15: his name, and that's what your body knows to do,
Speaker 15: burst into tears.
Speaker 14: Any question that success. And there was an impulse like
Speaker 14: the two of us just stood there, held on to
Speaker 14: each other for a long time. I have no idea
Speaker 14: what was going around us while we were doing that, but.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean, the thing that strikes me about all
Speaker 15: of it is how unfinished. All of it feels like,
Speaker 15: all the conversations, all of the interactions, there's nothing like, wow,
Speaker 15: that's done. There's nothing done, you know, not remotely done.
Speaker 2: Nothing is done. None of it is finished. The family
Speaker 2: story goes on because the family does a little more
Speaker 2: whole than before.
Speaker 9: And it just felt like, you know, it was just
Speaker 9: a puzzle missing, you know, you it feels like now
Speaker 9: the piece, like I have the piece of the puzzle
Speaker 9: that I just felt like that my family needed.
Speaker 8: If you have any standing in the state of Mississippi.
Speaker 8: Part of your work is writing wrongs. There are many
Speaker 8: for this.
Speaker 1: Project.
Speaker 8: I don't see it so much as an overt effort
Speaker 8: to right wrongs, because I think that assumes the old
Speaker 8: stereotypical asylum motif of a terrible place, overcrowded, abandoned people,
Speaker 8: and that's not the picture that's emerging from the history
Speaker 8: that we're collecting.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 8: Are there things that could have been done differently and
Speaker 8: we want to both acknowledge and learn from those.
Speaker 2: Sure, the story of Asylum Hill is one of discovery, memory, pain,
Speaker 2: and catharsis. But most of all, the story of Asylum
Speaker 2: Hill is unexpected. A crew of scientists, historians, artist, school
Speaker 2: council professors, and gravedousers, all digging deeper in search of understanding.
Speaker 2: At the Mississippi Museum of Art, Noah's exhibit was up
Speaker 2: for nearly six months. Visitors came through, sat with the work,
Speaker 2: reckoned with their own histories. Museum staff told me that
Speaker 2: they lost count of how many people made a point
Speaker 2: to let them know that Noah's family story of mental
Speaker 2: illness was not all that unlike their own, and the
Speaker 2: exhibit offered another very tangible way for museum goers to engage.
Speaker 4: Okay, so y'all this thread right here, I try to
Speaker 4: go over.
Speaker 5: It's not a big deal.
Speaker 3: Then oh, I try to go over this and ideally.
Speaker 2: Out under the other one on its own.
Speaker 13: So don't even worry about that that was starting. I'll
Speaker 13: go over it because that, in the end makes it
Speaker 13: loop around the edge.
Speaker 2: Well, on the night of Noah's opening, we noticed this
Speaker 2: hulking structure, blond wood and string. It was tucked into
Speaker 2: the corner of the room next to Noah's painting, cordoned
Speaker 2: off behind red velvet ropes.
Speaker 13: Like I was saying, you can make the end sort
Speaker 13: of come.
Speaker 4: To about this point perfect, that'll be fine, and then
Speaker 4: let your foot off.
Speaker 2: It was a loom four feet wide, maybe a bit taller.
Speaker 13: There's not a whole lot of these out in the world.
Speaker 13: It was like a big batch of them made for
Speaker 13: a craft school in Canada in the nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 13: this is one of them. Sometimes people will contact me
Speaker 13: because they'll be looking for Millville loom and they'll run
Speaker 13: across me in contact me.
Speaker 2: Like where'd you get it?
Speaker 13: But looms are like that.
Speaker 2: That was the loom's owner, my name's Emily Wicki. Emily's
Speaker 2: not a weaver by trade. She's an archaeological field tech,
Speaker 2: one of the field tech's working on the Asylum hillsite.
Speaker 4: It beat it down, okay, or we'll get this out.
Speaker 2: She'd set this loom up at the museum with a
Speaker 2: very specific project in mind, a collaborative one. Over the
Speaker 2: course of the summer, anyone who'd come to see Noah's show,
Speaker 2: to visit the museum would be invited to weave a
Speaker 2: few rows.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 13: So my idea is for anyone that comes in that
Speaker 13: will at once too that would feel as if it
Speaker 13: will hopefully enjoy it, to sit down and add to this.
Speaker 2: So I asked her about the colors of the threads.
Speaker 2: She'd dyed them herself, using natural dyes like black walnut, indigo,
Speaker 2: golden rod, and yazoo clay, taken straight from the old
Speaker 2: Asylum cemetery. The project is community driven to its core,
Speaker 2: from the weavers down to the pattern Emily's embedded within
Speaker 2: the loom.
Speaker 4: The warp is the vertical threads that.
Speaker 13: Are running through this, and I did all of the
Speaker 13: planning and setting a bath. It's called dressing the loom
Speaker 13: because it takes so long to set it up, but
Speaker 13: then to see it create this pattern that's you don't
Speaker 13: even understand how it's happening.
Speaker 2: Which the community represented in that pattern isn't just the living,
Speaker 2: the people who can get to the museum and add
Speaker 2: their personal touch to this cloth. It's also every patient
Speaker 2: who passed through the doors of the old asylum between
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety two and nineteen nineteen that we're in that viole.
Speaker 2: The vertical strings on this loom, their color and how
Speaker 2: they alternate with each other represent actual data about the
Speaker 2: people who once lived at the asylum, their race, their gender.
Speaker 4: Yeah, do so right over here, I reference these by
Speaker 4: any reports of who die. And they separate all of.
Speaker 7: This explains it it basically does.
Speaker 13: They separated it by male.
Speaker 7: And female and white and population of color.
Speaker 13: Okay, so I separated it. And here like.
Speaker 2: That, every single vertical thread represents four patients. A black
Speaker 2: thread signals a new year.
Speaker 13: So every time you see the stripes change, there's two
Speaker 13: colors for one year, and every time you see that rollover,
Speaker 13: that's another year.
Speaker 2: And as the number of patients that the asylum grows,
Speaker 2: so do the stripes, widening from left to right. As
Speaker 2: more and more people of color become patients at the asylum,
Speaker 2: vertical green threads begin to outnumber gray. The facts the data.
Speaker 2: Emily embedded these into the vertical pattern when she's set
Speaker 2: up the loom, but the horizontal patterns those up.
Speaker 5: To the weaver.
Speaker 2: The colors they pick, how they pass the shuttle from
Speaker 2: one hand to the other, whether they were nervous or
Speaker 2: forceful or methodical, all informs what the final fabric will
Speaker 2: look like.
Speaker 13: So I've done the hard part of setting up the
Speaker 13: warp and doing the calculations to make it a specific
Speaker 13: type of weave. But the way the pattern is embedded,
Speaker 13: people will be able to do all kinds of different patterns,
Speaker 13: and by they can make it as plain or as.
Speaker 4: Crazy or abstract as they want.
Speaker 5: So hopefully.
Speaker 13: Every time someone weaves, they'll be sort of connecting to
Speaker 13: that past and will be sort of complicating those overly
Speaker 13: simplified statistics in my mind. But I hope it'll mean
Speaker 13: many different.
Speaker 5: Things to many people.
Speaker 13: I hope everyone will come and have an experience with it.
Speaker 2: The weaving isn't just for the edification of the living.
Speaker 2: After all, this cemetery, what's left of it it's never
Speaker 2: really about us, And neither is this fabric that Emily
Speaker 2: and others have brought into being, because this isn't just
Speaker 2: a cloth or a throw that's being woven. It's a
Speaker 2: burial shroud, much like the ones the patients themselves were
Speaker 2: buried on, sometimes with too many safety pins.
Speaker 16: Yeah, but I love the idea of being buried and
Speaker 16: like getting returned to the earth, like returning to the mother.
Speaker 16: You know, I just really love that he was talking
Speaker 16: about shame and like how you have shame from an
Speaker 16: unmarked grave and not knowing what happened to someone. But
Speaker 16: like it's really kind of beautiful, like like we really
Speaker 16: don't our graves don't last that long.
Speaker 13: You know, a lot of comfort in knowing the ephemeral
Speaker 13: like of my mistakes and otherwise.
Speaker 5: But just you know, I just find that to.
Speaker 4: Be comforting that I'm just this little part of a
Speaker 4: bigger story, you know, a huge story.
Speaker 2: Fifty million years ago, some bits of a mineral called
Speaker 2: smectite got swept up, carried along on fast moving waters
Speaker 2: flowing south. Eventually the water slowed and the minerals fell,
Speaker 2: settling down forming layer upon layer of clay. Time passed
Speaker 2: the sun rose, the rain fell, the rivers changed course.
Speaker 2: A city got built on top of the clay. The
Speaker 2: rain fell, the sun rose, the clay swelled and shrank,
Speaker 2: and foundations got wrecked. At an asylum on a hill,
Speaker 2: a cemetery was laid into this clay. At an asylum
Speaker 2: on a hill, a cemetery was forgotten. Then, not all
Speaker 2: too long ago, hands scooped up some of that fairy clay.
Speaker 5: They added it to.
Speaker 2: Water, and added yarn to the dark orange slurry. The
Speaker 2: two sat there together for weeks, one staining the other.
Speaker 2: Then that pair of hands pulled out the yarn, wrung
Speaker 2: out most of the water and most of the clay.
Speaker 2: At the end of it, all that yarn would be
Speaker 2: wound around a spool and set on a loom. It
Speaker 2: would become part of a fabric, one created by hundreds
Speaker 2: of pairs of hands, intimately weaving the past into the present.
Speaker 2: It's like I said at the beginning, Yazoo clay is
Speaker 2: the bane of central Mississippi. It wreaks havoc on everything
Speaker 2: from our homes to our graves to our memories. But
Speaker 2: it's also the source of great beauty. Mississippians, after all,
Speaker 2: grow deep roots. We kind of can't help it. Maybe
Speaker 2: that's why we're so hung up on the dirt therein
Speaker 2: under Yazoo. Clay is executive produced by the Mississippi Museum
Speaker 2: of Art in partnership with pod People. It's hosted by
Speaker 2: me Larison Campbell and written and produced by Rebecca Shasson
Speaker 2: and myself with help from Angela Yee and Amy Machado,
Speaker 2: with editing and sound design by Morgan Fuz and Erica Wong,
Speaker 2: and thanks to Blue Dot Sessions for music. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to Betsy Bradley at the Mississippi Museum of Art, as
Speaker 2: well as Leida Gibson at the Center for Bioethics and
Speaker 2: Medical Humanities at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Visit
Speaker 2: Jackson and Jay and Deny Stein.