# Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South

> **NIH NIH G13** · EMORY UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $47,483

## Abstract

Dr Kylie M. Smith NLM G13 Application.
Title: Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South
Abstract:
 Disparities in mental health, especially for minorities and African Americans, have a long
and complex history. Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American
South, analyzes the practices and politics of segregation in psychiatric institutions in Georgia,
Alabama and Mississippi in the 1960s and 70s. The project pays particular attention to the
impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 on the operation of
state institutions, demonstrating that different approaches to the issues of racial segregation had
varied consequences for services in these states. During the 1960s a number of mental health
professionals and Civil Rights lawyers attempted to change the ways in which services were
provided and patients cared for. Alabama was particularly significant in this period as the
judicial activism of Judge Frank Johnson, who ruled in favour of patients in a number of medical
segregation and minimum standards cases, set national precedents. Despite the significance of
Johnson's court for national mental health law, there is no existing research on the process of
desegregation in the psychiatric hospitals of Alabama or neighboring states Georgia or
Mississippi who had their own particular responses to legislative and cultural change. Similarly,
there is no analysis of the long-term implications of the racist psychiatric thinking which
underpinned disparities in these states. This project aims to expand on recent scholarship in the
history of psychiatry that focuses on Northern states, by analyzing the ways in which the legacy
of segregation has shaped the development of mental health services in the South. The advent of
Medicare and Medicaid funds gave leverage to government and judicial enforcement of Title VI
of the Civil Rights Act, finally forcing the formal desegregation of these facilities. However,
underlying racist attitudes were harder to shift. These attitudes can be linked to current
disparities in mental health care and to the complex relationship between mental illness and mass
incarceration.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10304907
- **Project number:** 5G13LM013010-03
- **Recipient organization:** EMORY UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Kylie Monique Smith
- **Activity code:** G13 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $47,483
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-12-01 → 2022-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10304907

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10304907, Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South (5G13LM013010-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10304907. Licensed CC0.

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