Central State Hospital Exhibit

Central Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane remained racially segregated from its post-Civil War opening in 1870 to 1968, when federal law required integration of health care facilities. This 1870–2025 exhibition identifies the once-obscure origins of the first black state hospital in America and elevates the value of understanding how historical predictions of illness based on race influenced admissions, diagnoses, and treatment.

Exhibit items from the hospital's extensive archives unveil detailed medical, political, and legal origins that include 100 years of lost and misplaced primary source documents, photographs, public laws, news articles, admissions, diagnostic, treatment, and mortality data. This exhibit creates a threshold for increasing our interest and knowledge about how racial assumptions negatively influenced the evolution of clinical education, public policy, research, and practice. As a new hospital emerges in 2025, its history will help to influence its future goals, design, and ensure the preservation of its at-risk archives.

Read more about Central State Hospital here.

Learn more about the Central State Digital Library and Archives Project here.