Cherry Hospital - North Carolina. Meg Curtis

Encouraged by the influence of Dorothea Dix, the North Carolina General Assembly appointed a committee to spearhead the construction of a new mental health facility for African American patients in 1877.  (Dorothea Dix argued that mental illness was an educated, White affliction only).   

In August of the following year, 171 acres of land was purchased in a town called Goldsboro, which would eventually come the cite for the official “Asylum for the Colored Insane”, as it was called then.  The institution has undergone several name changes, including the Eastern North Carolina Insane Asylum, Eastern Hospital the State Hospital at Goldsboro, and finally Cherry Hospital in 1959, after of Governer R. Gregg Cherry, who was widely known for his work expanding mental health services in the state. 

None of Cherry Hospital’s iterations adhered to the Kirkbride Design or focused on Moral Treatment as a practice model.  The goal was to provide a place for African Americans dealing with mental illness (although the definition of mental illness in this instance is incredibly broad – one official document lists possible diagnoses such as masturbation and ‘deranged menses’) to stay separate from the rest of the community.  The original hospital included 76 beds but housed over 100 patients by Christmas of the hospital’s opening year.  In 1881, Eastern North Carolina Insane Asylum was incorporated, and a board of nine directors were appointed to oversee its operation.  They approved the construction of a second building for patients suffering from tuberculosis, and in 1924, another building was erected for patients diagnosed as criminally insane. 

Eastern North Carolina Insane Asylum, 1896.

State Hospital for Colored Insane, 1950.

It was the state’s sole mental institution for African Americans until 1965, when the hospital was desegregated in order to comply with the newly-passed Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The most widely documented therapy used at Cherry Hospital was called “work therapy”.  Until 1974, the fields surrounding the primary building were tended by its patients, which generated considerable income for the hospital.  An 1884 Superintendent Report boasts, “80 barrels corn, 6,000 pounds of fodder, 50 bushels of peas, and 3,000 pounds of oats.  We now have 37 hogs for butchering and estimate their weight at 4,000 pounds.  An accurate account of the vegetables has not been kept, and the value of our kitchen garden can hardly be estimated.  The orchard gave us apples in abundance.”  Occasionally, patients were loaned out to local farmers as additional laborers.  As the farm grew, so did the number of patients required to harvest the crops, so the hospital numbers swelled to well over 3,000.   During Cherry Hill’s first century of existence, it supported over 91,000 patients. 

Other treatments included sitting in a rocking chair (the most frequently-used treatment, per the hospital’s small museum), electroshock therapy and caging patients (a practice that continued until 1956).  Although overcrowding was a known issue, the Superintendent Report from 1884 includes the line, “It is not…recommend here that steps should be taken for enlarging.  The State, at present, has a large burden in providing for the white insane.”  An occupational therapist was hired in 1932, but most therapeutic interventions occurred on the farm, and used other in-hospital tasks, such as laundry and kitchen work, etc.  Chapel services were eventually made available to patients in the 1950’s, as well as tranquilizing and psychotropic medications. 

The band of the "Asylum for Colored Insane" in Goldsboro, North Carolina.  Date Unknown. 

The hospital remained open until a newer facility took its place in 2016, three years after it was originally slated to open.  There have been several controversies surrounding the care provided at Cherry Hospital, especially in 2001 and in 2008.  In 2001, a deaf man named Junius Wilson died at age 93 after spending most of his life in Cherry Hospital.  Wilson was accused of rape in 1925, and was assumed insane as he communicated solely with a sign language taught in the South.  His charges were dropped in the 1970’s, but he remained at the hospital until 1991, when a social worker realized he was deaf.  In 2008, the hospital nearly lost its national accreditation due to a highly-publicized case of malpractice.  A patient named Steven Sabock died while strapped to a chair, ignored by staff by over 24 hours. 

For all of these reasons, I would not want to be treated at Cherry Hospital.  The original institution was nothing but a means of continuing to profit financially from slavery despite the end of the Civil War, and the new institution seemed to perpetuate dangerous, problematic practices like electroshock therapy and an over-reliance on psychotropic medication.   

Resources:

https://www.commongroundprogram.com/blog/love-and-outrage-asylum-for-the-colored-insane

http://www.jazzloftproject.org/blog/general/the-most-haunting-band-picture-ive-seen

https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/eastern84/eastern84.html

https://s3.amazonaws.com/kajabi-storefronts-production/sites/41305/themes/924270/downloads/tmvFCiJhToGbABIu72q9_In_Our_Own_Voice.pdf

https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2016/08/31/new-cherry-hospital-makes-its-debut-three-years-late/

https://modernfarmer.com/2017/12/strange-horrifying-history-cherry-research-farm-north-carolina/