Lyda Gibson
Appearances
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
So there were initially a separate wing for the Black patients, and then very quickly they built annexes off the back that were three stories as well. But, you know, obviously they weren't as big and spacious as the initial structure.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
Yes. So the Kirkbride Plan in general, and certainly the institution in Mississippi, was established for those people who could be cured. It was never meant as a place where people would live out their lives, but there were no other options. So what do you do with somebody who is having epileptic seizures all day long? What do you do with people who are never going to get better?
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
And this idea that People who had been dethroned of reason were the only people that this institution could serve was just not realistic from the beginning. And I think that's the popular narrative that they just said, you know, okay, we're going to just become everything to all these people who need different things. They simply were reacting to the situation at the time.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
And, you know, in a couple of the reports, people say, what are we supposed to do when people show up at the door? Are we supposed to just leave them out on the streets? And so there were a lot of people who were accepted in the asylum and there was an acknowledgement that they weren't going to get better. So the philosophy never really changed.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
It was simply that they had to deal with the cards they were dealt.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
I mean, I had never even heard of pellagra before. So pellagra was a nutritional deficiency that just swept the Southeast starting at about 1910. And it's characterized by what they call the four Ds, dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, death.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
in that order people from all walks of life would come down with pellagra of course the dementia wasn't apparent until close to the end so many many patients especially those from the delta were admitted with pellagra and in the institutional reports they talk about you know by the time they get here it's too late to do anything
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
So he did an experiment with prisoners from the Rankin County Penitentiary. These were, quote, volunteers who were then fed a very specific diet, and they were able to understand that pellagra came from this niacin deficiency.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
Because if you look at the old pictures of the, you know, of sharecroppers on the farms in the Delta, that cotton is planted right up to the shacks because they wanted to use every inch of land for cotton. And so they stopped... growing their own vegetables and raising hogs or raising cattle or anything like that. And they bought everything from the company store.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
And that's why we have enriched foods now. That's what it means. The advent of enriched foods was from Pelagra.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
I know that a lot of the work that's been done on asylums in the South in general assumes that patients came to the asylums and were not fed well and got pellagra at the asylum and then ended up dying of pellagra. I think the story is much different.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
They raised cattle. They had an award-winning hog operation, award-winning poultry operation. And my feeling is that patients may have been better fed at the asylum than they were at their homes.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
And so the death rate for people with pellagra was just incredible. I think it's a condemnation of sort of the Mississippi society rather than the asylum itself.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
There were people who committed suicide, and there were people who, you know, were victims of patient-on-patient violence. I am absolutely positive there were patients who were victims of sexual violence by, you know, the caregivers. I'm not saying that didn't happen. I'm saying if we only focus on that, we miss a lot of the story.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
And I say 30,000 patients approximately, and about 10,000 died based on the institutional records. And then 2,500 patients were there when Whitfield opened. So that means that 17,500 patients approximately were treated and released. We never hear those stories.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
I mean, I've run across maybe a couple of stories about, oh yeah, my great uncle went there, was at the old asylum for a little while, and then he came home and he was fine. You know, I mean, we just don't get those stories.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
When I first started this project, and I think the goals of the consortium members, the scholars who were involved from the beginning, certainly Dr. Didlake, was to sort of paint a portrait of what life was like at the asylum. And unfortunately, I think that's very, very difficult to do.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
When we try to sort of paint a portrait of what life was like or create a picture of what life was like at the asylum, number one, it was different from one year to the next, one decade to the next. It was different depending on your condition. I'm not naive enough to think that the black patients were treated as well as the white patients.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
But I also think sort of dismissing the superintendents and the people who work there because they were clearly entrenched in systemic racism, basically. I think we if we simply. ignore the stories. Because of that, we miss a lot of the story.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
So I've tried to have an open mind about possibly, I mean, was there anything positive about the fact that Black patients were admitted there and treated there? And I think in some ways trying to paint these really broad strokes is less respectful to the patients than we should be.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
The popular narrative is that it was great when it started out and then it just went downhill. The true narrative, I think, is just much more complicated than that.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
Thomas Kirkbride, who was a psychiatrist, was very devoted to taking care of people with mental health issues. And, you know, it's this whole idea that if you just get away from the normal pressures of life and have a little time to breathe and to enjoy the fresh air and to be taken care of, then you'll get better and you can return to life as a normal citizen.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
The Kirkbride plan, the idea was that you had to have a certain amount of cubic feet of airspace in order to get Well, these were rooms with really tall ceilings. They had huge windows. The patients could open the windows and you'll notice from the plan there's a hall down the middle and then every room on every side has a window. People had their own rooms when it first started.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
Perhaps it's not so pointed in the institutional records, but you read between the lines and you say, you know, look at what we do for those unfortunates among us. They did not use the words that would be... that would be acceptable today. And this became something that they could point to. This was the most impressive structure in the state that remained after the Civil War.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
This was sort of a monument to the goodness of Mississippi leaders.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
Well, we have connected with more descendants. We have had, especially after Noah's show, it's been such a great way to tell people about this project a little more, about how complicated the stories are. And we're hoping we're spurring more discussions about, again, about mental health currently.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
Sometimes it's easier to look at these stories through a historical lens instead of in our own neighborhoods right now as we're on our way to work. And so what we hope to do is really, you know, just get these conversations going in a more comfortable way about mental health and about treatment options, you know, 100 years ago and treatment options now.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
So as you know, and as I may have pointed out before, you know, many people who are interested in genealogy are older than So we have had some people who've just sort of disappeared. I did see the obituary for one of our key descendants a few weeks ago. So we've had people who have sort of dropped off the list or are no longer active. And then we've had people added.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
But if we're looking at totals. I would say 225 probably. And our list is, our active list is pretty well maintained at about 160 or so.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
That is a ton of stories. Oh, it's so many stories. And so the other thing, I mean, we're almost, we're up to almost, Jennifer and her crew are up to almost 700 exhumations. The weather... This fall and spring has been problematic. It's, you know, it has, you know, when it rains, it's one thing if it rains a week and then it doesn't rain for another three weeks.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
It's another challenge when it rains. One day, and then it dries out for two days, and then it rains again the third day. It's just, I mean, the rain has been difficult. But despite that, they have gotten a lot done.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
They have also found some things that are helping us really narrow the timeframe in certain parts of the cemetery, which will be very useful eventually in possibly identifying some of these remains, which will be really exciting.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
Well, the thing that has helped them date the burials more than anything is the nails that have remained from the coffins. And then there have been a few burials that have had coins sort of stacked where a pocket might have been. And so, you know, in looking at those coins, we had to clean them up first.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
And Mississippi Department of Archives and History has been very gracious in helping them get those cleaned up so we could see what was on them. But those dates help us narrow as well. So when these things sort of coincide, then that's really good. There was a pair of shoes.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
And there's a scholar at Mississippi State who was able to help us narrow down the timeframe that those shoes would have been made. Now, That means they couldn't have been worn before that, but then they could have been, who knows, they could have been worn for, you know, 50 years after that.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
So these little clues will eventually help us put together enough information in one spot to narrow things in the way that we would like to. Unfortunately, as you know, because of the Yazoo clay, different parts of the cemetery have better preservation than other parts of the cemetery.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
So the remains in certain parts, the bones, the shoes, things like that, are in better shape in certain parts of the cemetery than others. Right now, they are in a spot where almost nothing is preserved. So that has been just a challenge and sort of... you know, discouraging for the crew, but they will get finished with that at some point and move to another section.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
And we hope that there will be more that remain in the burials when they move on to another spot.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
And I am sure they probably did. But, you know, the records that remain, the patient records that remain are not even complete. And again, I keep hoping I go to estate sales. I go to flea markets and I always look in the boxes. They're just full of old papers. And I think, could this possibly be? something from the old asylum. Have you ever had luck? No, not yet.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
Wow. You know, I think I learn something new every day. I certainly learn something new from Jennifer every day because if they're not out in the field doing their archaeological work, they're inside cleaning the remains and cleaning any other artifacts that were in the burials afterwards.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
This is not something new that I've learned, but this is another thing that I sort of took part in with Dr. Mack and Dr. Didlake. There was a record somewhere that represented a concern among the asylum staff that a patient was going to be, that an overweight patient was not gonna be able to be transported up to the cemetery in the coffins that they built.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
And part of the issue was that the coffins on the bottom didn't have a solid piece of wood. It was two pieces of wood that were sort of joined in the middle. And so you would think it would be pretty easy for anybody, really, to kind of fall through the bottom. So Jennifer decided to do an experiment.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
And Dr. Didlake, who, of course, is a retired surgeon and director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities here, is also a very good woodworker. And so he built a coffin that we believe was very similar to what would have been used at the asylum. And then we got bags of sand. Yeah. And poured them in. I say we. I was not doing the heavy lifting. I was just there taking pictures.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
And so they, we all, put the sand in and got up to 250 pounds and it did not break. Let me see if there's anything else. Golly. Oh, yes. Okay. There is something else. So a physician here in Mississippi who is also a historian and is a medical historian in his own right, something he does in his spare time, donated a collection to us of various things he has found.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
bought or collected over the years having to do with medicine in Mississippi. And one of them was an etching of the old asylum from 1868. And it was an image I had never seen before. And we are incredibly grateful to have that. I mean, it's an original etching. That's really cool. It's very small.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
You know, I think the thing that surprised me is that all of the images that we have of the old asylum show it after things were added to it, especially in the front. So it had, you know, the wings on both sides. And this particular 1868 etching only has two wings, which, of course, the wings didn't get added until the first wing didn't get added until 1872.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
So I've never seen that image like that. And it just sort of like, of course, that's logical. I should have been envisioning that it that way in my head, but I just had I just had always envisioned it as it was when it closed down in 1935. I will mention this that might be interesting to y'all. Wayne came and visited because we got to the spot where he believed that his grandfather was.
Under Yazoo Clay
Bonus: Family by Mud
And I won't go any further than that. But it was a good visit. And we all left. He left very satisfied, as did we, about the resolution. Wait, what?
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
I don't believe anybody in the community, anybody certainly at the medical center now, really understood that there could possibly be that many burials on campus. One of my first questions when I came on was, why can't we just leave it? You know, why don't we just leave it alone? And why don't we let these people rest?
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
In 1990, when a building was being constructed in that area, the construction workers came across some burials as well. And at that time, the leadership went to the city and got all the sort of legal documents in place so that they could exhume these remains and relocate them to the UMMC cemetery.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
So it was the vision of Dr. Ralph Didlake to handle this challenge of having a cemetery on the last remaining part of the campus. It was his vision to kind of deal with this in a way that was ethical, that embraced the community.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
UMMC's place in Mississippi is incredibly important. Many people have no other options for health care except UMMC. This is Lyda Gibson. She works with the medical center. And it's needed for people who maybe come to Jackson for a day and have to get everything taken care of because they live 100 miles away.
Under Yazoo Clay
Threads
There's the project of sorting archived patient records. I think I estimated that it would take five years, given our current staffing, to just get everything indexed and separated.
Under Yazoo Clay
Threads
I'm not sure any of us expected that we would be at this point today, but here we are. And I mean, there are people who, I mean, there are descendants who've said, you know what, I don't like the idea of my relative being disturbed, but if she has to be, then this is the way I want it done.
Under Yazoo Clay
Threads
Well, the first time I heard about the old asylum, was from my mother. My mother is still with us. She is 95 years old, but she remembers as a child driving through the gravel driveway in front of the asylum on Sunday afternoons and waving at the patients. We've had lots of people who've come from the community and said, yeah, oh yeah, that was like the place to go.
Under Yazoo Clay
Threads
Whitfield was funded by the legislature in 1926. Then the Depression happened. Then there were shortages of everything, you know. And so the building of Whitfield and the opening of Whitfield was delayed until 1935. So you had from 1926 to 1935 when they were trying not to put any more money into this building that was literally condemned by the time the patients moved out.