| excerpted from: "A History of
Spring Grove", http://www.springgrove.com/history.html
 Although it is not known exactly when
the Hospital accepted its first African American patients, it is known
that African-American patients were admitted well before the Civil War --
at a time when Maryland was still a slave state. The first
identified reference to African-American patients at the Maryland Hospital
is found in the Hospital's Annual Report of 1849, which mentions the fact
that, as of as of the end of December of that year, there were 10
African-American patients (five males and five females) at the Hospital --
nine of which were "free" and one of which was a slave. On January 1, 1853
the Hospital also had 10 African-American Patients (six men and four
women). That figure represented 8% of the total number of the 130 patients
at the Hospital on that date. Also in 1853, one of the just four new
"public" patient admissions in that year was an African-American female.
An annual report published in December 1877 (five years after the new
facility opened at Spring Grove) notes that as of that time, the Maryland
Hospital for the Insane at Spring Grove was treating 18 African-American
patients, and by1896 it was caring for 45 African-American patients (24
male and 21 female).
 African-American patients were
identified in the records by the notation "col" or "colored." To
view one of the records from Spring Grove's Centennial year, 1897, click
on the image to the right.
Several documents from the period speak, predictably, to the then
predominate belief that the races should be separated -- although there
was also evidence that therapeutic activities, such as industrial therapy,
were integrated. In 1877, the following report was made by the
Hospital's Board of Managers:
"There is separate care and treatment of the colored
insane other than has been provisionally made in this Hospital. It
is impossible to provide for this class of insane in State Hospital
without associating them with the white patients. There are now
fifteen colored insane in the hospital -- seven males and eight females,
and three others have been received since the date of this Report.
Besides these, there are a large number in the almshouses of the State
whose condition demands early attention. Provision should be made
for them, without delay, by building a separate accommodation for them
in connection with a hospital for the insane. The cost of
construction need not exceed $400 per bed." (Maryland Hospital for the
Insane. Annual Report of the Board of Managers,
1877.)
By one report from the late 1800s, the rate of physical illness and
death was lower among the hospital's African-American population than it
was among the white population.
At first, the new facility at Spring Grove seems to have been racially
integrated. However, several annual reports from the end of the
19th-century indicate that by that time African-American patients were
segregated to certain (less desirable) sections of  the Main Building. For example,
it was noted that in 1896 an old bowling alley that was, evidently,
located in the basement of the Main Building, was converted to serve as a
ward for African-American patients. (The Annual report of that year
suggests that, unlike any of the other units in the hospital, the single
African-American ward served both male and females patients.) Records from
the turn of the 19th-century also indicate that African-American men often
lived in tents on the Hospital's grounds for as many as eight months out
of the year.
In the same tradition, in 1906 a separate building, constructed in back
of the Main Building, was opened as a "Cottage for
Colored Women" (see above). This cottage seems to have been the
first public hospital building in Maryland that was specifically
designated for the treatment of mentally ill African-American
patients.
At the same time, there was a growing awareness throughout the State of
the need to provide more and better psychiatric services to Maryland's
mentally ill African-American citizens. Despite the less than ideal
circumstances for African-American patients at Spring Grove in the 19th
and early 20th Century, conditions were far worse in the almshouses and
jails -- where many mentally ill African-American Maryland citizens
were confined. In response to the identified need for more and better
treatment for psychiatrically ill African Americans in Maryland, and
because of the racist beliefs of the time, a new state hospital, intended
exclusively for African-American patients, was founded in Crownsville,
Maryland in 1910. Originally known as The Hospital for the Negro Insane of
Maryland, the facility was renamed "Crownsville State Hospital" in
1912. In that same year, 1912, most male patients of African descent
were transferred from Spring Grove to Crownsville. African-American
females were transferred from Spring Grove to Crownsville the following
year (1913).
 It should be noted that according to
oral tradition, not all African-American patients were transferred to
Crownsville in 1912 and 1913; evidently certain patients remained at the
Spring Grove facility because they held unique or indispensable
work-skills. Most people are astonished to learn that the
Maryland State hospital system was not officially desegregated until 1963.
Spring Grove began the process of reintegration a few years before that,
in1961.
|
