To respond to a recent demand of the ACLU of Maryland, and to augment theories from Disability Incarcerated (2014) about the convergence of race, disability, and due process (or lack thereof), this essay analyzes the extent to which racism informed the creation of Maryland's Hospital for the 'Negro' Insane (Crownsville Hospital). In order to understand the extent of racism in Crownsville's earlier years, I will take into account 14 categories within conditions of confinement from 1921-1928 and compare them to the nearby, white asylum. Ultimately, the hospital joins the ranks of separate and unequal (Plessy vs. Ferguson) institutions founded alongside a rhetoric of fear that the Baltimore Sun daily paper deemed "a Black invasion" of the city of Baltimore. Even more, I add to public memory of this racialized space invoking the rhetorical frame, as Kendall Phillips advises, of responsibility and apology (versus absolution) within the context of present-day racial justice movements.
<p>This article looks to the genre of letter-writing and to epistolary rhetoric in order to recover perspectives seemingly lost amongst the medicalized discourse of asylum histories. These hard-to-find letters written in the nineteenth century by pupils, family members, and teachers open us up to new perspectives not available in other archival documents. I give a brief introduction to the history and theory of epistolary rhetoric, delimit a disability epistolary, and then consider a group of letters in terms of the rhetorical action they perform. I conclude by emphasizing the significance of this cross-disciplinary work for both rhetoric and disability studies.</p>
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