Article ID: CBB819341195

Truth in numbers? Emancipation, race, and federal census statistics in the debates over Black mental health in the United States, 1840–1900 (2021)

unapi

To the keen observer of American political and medical history, a disturbing set of debates surrounded the sanity of free Black residents of the United States of America after the publication of the controversial 1840 census returns on race and insanity. This article analyzes how the census became a battlefield where physicians and other commentators fought over—and thus shaped—various political meanings of Black insanity before and after the American Civil War, up until the 1890s, as the South underwent a massive political and social transformation, from slavery to emancipation. It also highlights the arguments raised by authors such as James McCune Smith and Ramón de la Sagra who attempted to disprove the returns shortly after their publication, and whose arguments contributed to efforts to combat scientific racism.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB819341195/

Similar Citations

Book Wendy Gonaver; (2019)
The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840–1880 (/isis/citation/CBB313122849/)

Book Rana A. Hogarth; (2017)
Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840 (/isis/citation/CBB687058150/)

Thesis Jazmin Antwynette Evans; (2019)
Scientific Racism's Role in the Social Thought of African Intellectual, Moral, and Physical Inferiority (/isis/citation/CBB578195827/)

Book Kaplan, Mary; (2005)
Solomon Carter Fuller: Where My Caravan Has Rested (/isis/citation/CBB000610118/)

Thesis Reed, Adam Metcalfe; (2014)
Mental Death: Slavery, Madness and State Violence in the United States (/isis/citation/CBB001567578/)

Book Jenny M. Luke; (2018)
Delivered by Midwives: African American Midwifery in the Twentieth-Century South (/isis/citation/CBB243389922/)

Article Barry, Lorelle; Coleborne, Catharine; (2011)
Insanity and Ethnicity in New Zealand: Maori Encounters with the Auckland Mental Hospital, 1860--1900 (/isis/citation/CBB001232208/)

Thesis Lawrence, Sarah Raphael; (2007)
On Their Own Terms: African Americans and Birth Control in the Rural South,1900--1942 (/isis/citation/CBB001561508/)

Article Tuttle, Kelly; (2012)
For the Love of the Lab (/isis/citation/CBB001450607/)

Book Wailoo, Keith; (2011)
How Cancer Crossed the Color Line (/isis/citation/CBB001231902/)

Authors & Contributors
Summers, Martin
Doyle, Dennis
Mooney, Katherine C.
Ji-Hye Shin
Adams, Andrea
Evans, Jazmin Antwynette
Concepts
Medicine and race
African Americans
African Americans and science
Psychiatry
Mental disorders and diseases
Science and race
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
21st century
18th century
Places
United States
Southern states (U.S.)
New York City (New York, U.S.)
Atlantic world
Atlantic Ocean
Georgia (U.S.)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment