Disparities of Cherry Hospital - Asylum for the Colored Insane
Living in the southern states of America was difficult for Black Americans. Not only were we vulnerable to the burden of daily racism – in the form of public lynching, violence, and the caste system known as Jim Crow – but the impact of the eugenics movement shifted the violence into medical legality on those placed in mental institutions. Between 1907 and 1940, more than 18,000 sterilizations of individuals deemed as "defective" took place in mental institutions, particularly in southern states. That was the norm for mental hospitals at the time, but nothing is more heart-wrenching than the story of Junis Wilson and his time at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro, NC. Junis Wilson had been a resident of Cherry Hospital from the tender age of 17. He was accused of rape in 1925 and because he only communicated in grunts and strange hand gestures, he was deemed insane by a judge and locked up at the Asylum for the Colored Insane. For decades, no one tried to understand him or le