On December 17, 1869, Union Army General Edward Canby transferred the Freedmen's Bureau Howard's Grove Hospital to the Commonwealth of Virginia for care of colored insane. This was the only mental hospital in the nation the Union Army required exclusively for formerly enslaved Africans and Freedmen believed to have been suffering from insanity.
The Central Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane retained this name and its location in Richmond from 1870 to 1884 until a new hospital was completed in 1885 on the Mayfield Plantation, a property that had been donated to the Commonwealth by the Petersburg City Council. In 1894, it was renamed Central State Hospital. It remained segregated by race until 1968.
Credit: Harpers' Weekly, April 15, 1865
| Information | ||
|---|---|---|
| File Type | jpg | |
| URL | https://www.apaf.org/getmedia/70bf694b-3392-456e-a6bc-a08c6936299e/12-General-Canby.jpg | |
| Gallery | Central State Hospital Exhibit | |