Crazy, For Sure

This exhaustively researched book will give you yet one more reason to be ashamed of our past. Built in 1911, Crownsville Hospital in Maryland was designed for Black patients, built by Black patients (yes, that's right), and certainly funded at the expense of Black patients. Patients (called everything but that) who were brought to Crownsville, say for speaking with a British accent, protesting against racism (peacefully), and for not answering questions at a police station. Or mainly, for just being Black. Of course, we know that mental health assessment was quite subjective for anyone in that era, but there was an unapoligetic disparity between funding and staffing for local white hospitals and Crownsville, unsurprisingly. This book tracks this hospital, its workers, therapists and directors, the populace that surrounded it, and weaves the saga of what abject racism can do to hold people back in all sorts of ways.