0:01

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott

0:03

confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in

0:05

Bone Valley Season 1. Every time

0:08

I hear about my dad is,

0:10

oh, he's a killer. He's just

0:12

straight evil. I was becoming

0:14

the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the

0:16

son he'd never known. At the

0:18

end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Listen

0:21

to new episodes of Bone Valley Season

0:23

2 on the I Heart Radio app,

0:25

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

0:27

podcasts. I'm

0:30

Soledad O 'Brien, and on my

0:33

new True Crime podcast, Murder on

0:35

the Towpath, I'm taking you back

0:37

to 1964 to the cold case

0:39

of artist Mary Pinchow -Meyer. She

0:41

had been shot twice in the

0:43

head and in the back. It

0:45

turns out Mary was connected

0:47

to a very powerful man.

0:50

I pledge you that we

0:52

shall neither commit nor promote

0:54

aggression. John F. Kennedy. Listen

0:56

to Murder on the Toe Path

0:58

with Soledad O 'Brien on the

1:01

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever

1:03

you get your podcast. Hey,

1:09

it's Zuko and Kayla from The Wake Up Call. Enjoy

1:11

your podcast, and when you're done, don't forget about us.

1:14

We have a radio show. We try to bring a

1:16

smile to your face every morning. We also talked to

1:18

some of the hottest country stars of today. like

1:21

to share some good news with that's what I like. Because

1:23

Lord knows that's hard to find. When

1:25

you're done podcasting your podcast, listen to

1:27

us at 92 .3 WCOL. Set your

1:29

preset on your radio right now and don't forget you

1:31

can listen to us online on the I Heart Radio

1:34

app. We're

1:41

standing in a hallway at the Mississippi

1:43

State Hospital at Woodfield, one

1:45

of a handful of state run

1:47

residential mental health facilities still operating

1:49

here. It's my first

1:51

time really seeing the hospital, but

1:54

I've heard about it my whole

1:56

life. Everyone in Mississippi has. It

2:03

was the threat that your family

2:05

always gave you. If you act

2:07

crazy, you'll go to Whitfield. Oh,

2:09

yeah? People see you do

2:11

that. You're going to Whitfield. If you don't

2:13

play, I'm going to take you to Whitfield.

2:16

I'll put you out. What

2:20

field? That's the

2:22

informal name for the Mississippi State Hospital.

2:25

It's been Mississippi's primary mental health

2:27

facility since 1935, when the state

2:29

shuttered the old asylum in Jackson

2:31

and moved those patients out here.

2:34

It's that place your mom says you'll go

2:36

if you don't act right. The

2:38

place your friend's neighbor got sent. It

2:41

has mythic status in Mississippi.

2:45

But standing here in a marble

2:47

room full of outdated therapy equipment,

2:49

What feels not scary? It's

2:52

quaint. At least in

2:54

the museum. Hard to say how

2:56

much of that is because of our tour guides, Donna

2:58

Brown and Kathy Denton. These two

3:00

have been here for decades and know

3:03

everything about the place. Donna

3:05

took the lead with Kathy chiming in.

3:08

I noticed a black and white photo

3:10

of a woman in what looks like

3:12

a shower. The lady in the shower,

3:14

they had to pencil in panties and

3:16

bra on her cuffs. That

3:19

was pornography for 1938.

3:23

It's a quirky museum. There's

3:25

a display of patient -run newspapers

3:28

and literary magazines. And

3:30

then, around the corner, posters

3:32

for movies were what field

3:34

makes a cameo, including the

3:36

Sandra Bullitt classic, A

3:39

Time to Kill. There's the

3:41

scene in the movie where

3:43

she breaks into the psychiatrist's

3:45

office. was filmed in the

3:48

building that you passed on the way

3:50

to this one. And the beast within,

3:52

you watch a lot of it on

3:54

YouTube. But you're going to recognize

3:56

very little of the hospital. There's

3:58

a lot of screaming and running

4:01

and dark. Part

4:05

of the museum is

4:07

housed in one of

4:10

Whitfield's old hydrotherapy units.

4:14

Hydrotherapy basically means using water as medical

4:16

treatment for physical or mental health. If

4:18

you've ever taken a dip at a

4:21

spa, you've had hydrotherapy.

4:24

Today you can go to the spa

4:26

that will wrap you in mud, sand,

4:28

allogel, seaweed, coffee grounds, tea leaves, salt,

4:30

sugar. The most expensive

4:32

one I found is pink Indian

4:34

sand in New Orleans, $1

4:37

,200, 45 minutes. Back

4:40

in the day, it was on the bleeding edge

4:42

of mental health care. Woodfield's

4:44

hydrotherapy unit consisted of several rooms of

4:46

white marble from the floor all the

4:49

way up to the ceiling, and

4:51

the kind of porcelain sinks and

4:53

claw -footed tubs that an HGTV

4:56

host would kill for. Hydrotherapy

4:58

tubs. Now, this is by far the

5:00

treatment of choice. Just

5:02

a long soak and a big

5:04

old bath. But other

5:07

hydrotherapy practices were more brutal

5:09

than relaxing. This is

5:11

a needle spray shower or a scotch

5:14

shower. He's one of these nozzles, control

5:16

the jet of the water. cold

5:18

here, hot here, back and forth.

5:20

The doctor would literally write a

5:22

prescription. The patient would come

5:25

in, go to the center, hold onto

5:27

the bars. She would start spraying the

5:29

formula. See the petals? They're

5:31

not here today, but that controlled the

5:34

intensity via water. If

5:36

you've seen one flew over the

5:38

cuckoo's nest, it's easy to imagine

5:40

a sadistic nurse ratchet gleefully blasting

5:43

patients into submission. But

5:45

the first antipsychotic drug wasn't

5:47

introduced until the 1950s, nearly

5:50

100 years after Mississippi opened

5:52

its original state asylum. Donna

5:55

tells us that the doctors of that

5:57

era really believed that this was an

5:59

effective treatment. Donna waved

6:02

us toward another room. This one was

6:04

almost like a grotto with a big

6:06

slab smack dab in the middle, like

6:09

an altar. That's where

6:11

the patients would be placed. This

6:13

is a wet pack treatment. When he came,

6:15

he was very manic, very

6:17

fidgety. They wanted to calm him

6:20

down, so they wrapped him in

6:22

sheets as tight as they could,

6:24

much like a swaddled baby. Got

6:26

him on the table, hot and

6:28

cold water faucets. They'd soak him

6:30

down. Before we

6:32

exit the hydrotherapy unit, Donna reads us

6:35

a poem. Meditation

6:37

in hydrotherapy, Theodore Rothke.

6:41

Six hours a day, I lay me

6:43

down, within this tub,

6:45

but cannot drown. Within

6:48

this primal element, the

6:50

flesh is willing to repent. I

6:53

do not laugh, I do not cry. I'm

6:56

sweating out the will to die. My

6:58

past is sliding down the drain.

7:01

I soon will be myself again.

7:08

I wish Theodore Recky were still around,

7:10

because I'd love to ask him about

7:13

that last line. Is

7:15

it sarcastic? Or

7:17

did he really feel like an ice bath

7:19

restored his sanity? Was

7:21

he just hoping that it would? The

7:24

more I've listened, the more I hear

7:27

irony, and I soon will be myself

7:29

again. But maybe that's

7:31

because of the place asylums have come

7:33

to occupy in my, or really in

7:35

the American imagination. It's

7:38

a place of broken promises. You're

7:40

supposed to get better, but in most stories

7:43

I've read, most movies I've

7:45

seen, the opposite happens.

7:48

Maybe that's why there's such a popular

7:50

setting for horror films. That

7:55

may be the narrative we have today,

7:57

but it's not the one the asylum

8:00

started with. The

8:02

promise of the old asylum was that

8:04

it was a place for healing. But

8:08

over one -third of the patients

8:10

who passed through the old asylum

8:12

stores died within them. The

8:16

popular narrative is that it was great

8:18

when it started out and then just

8:20

went downhill. The true

8:22

narrative, I think, is just much more

8:25

complicated than that. So

8:28

how exactly did this promise break?

8:31

I'm Larison Campbell, and this

8:34

is under Yazoo Clay. When

8:44

word got out back in 2012 that thousands

8:46

of bodies had been found at the site

8:48

of Mississippi's old asylum, the

8:50

news spread fast. This

8:52

is the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

8:55

Its campus is home to six health

8:57

science schools, more than 3 ,000 students

8:59

and thousands of unmarked graves. It

9:02

hit that viral sweet spot. A

9:04

horror movie in one headline. Not

9:07

just confirming our dark expectations, but

9:10

exceeding them. It's death

9:12

and drama in the Old South

9:14

and a lunatic asylum all baldened

9:16

one. What ends up is

9:18

the Southern Gothic, the terrain of

9:20

terror. That's Mab Segrist,

9:22

Southern scholar and historical author.

9:25

Mab spent more than 15

9:27

years researching and studying George's

9:29

Millageville Asylum, because this isn't

9:31

just a Mississippi story. Many

9:34

states had asylums in and out of

9:36

the South. But the terrain

9:38

of terror that Mab's describing? That's

9:41

not the way things started out for our old

9:43

asylum. Starts off

9:45

is a story about enlightenment optimism.

9:48

It starts in Europe and it

9:50

comes to this country. That

9:54

enlightenment, she mentions, is THE

9:56

enlightenment. That glowing moment

9:58

of philosophy and reason in Europe

10:00

between the 17th and centuries.

10:04

Eventually, these ideals made their way across

10:06

the pond. Until people

10:08

were enlightened, society's primary solution

10:10

for dealing with severe mental

10:12

illness was simple. Isolation

10:15

or restraint. Sometimes

10:17

both. That could

10:19

mean the family home, behind a locked

10:21

door in a back room, or if

10:24

you're a first wife of Victorian literature

10:26

in the attic. For

10:28

those whose families couldn't care for

10:30

them, there were public almshouses and

10:33

the county jail. How far

10:35

we've come. Physical

10:37

restraints were common. Sanitation

10:39

standards non -existent. Dungeons

10:42

were a real thing. The

10:45

goal here, separate the

10:47

ill person from the non -ill

10:49

community. But

10:51

as enlightenment ideas called on, as

10:54

medicine and science became more robust,

10:57

doctors began to argue that mental

10:59

illness was a problem society could

11:01

actually solve. start

11:04

to believe that you can heal the

11:06

troubled mind if you change the environment.

11:12

If you put them in a

11:14

beautiful place and you give them

11:16

doctors who pay attention and listen

11:18

to them, you give them good

11:20

nutrition, you give them a beautiful

11:22

setting, and you give them some

11:24

occupational therapy, then they'll get better.

11:27

It's called the moral therapy, and that

11:29

you could cure people by changing structures,

11:31

which is a very progressive idea. And,

11:33

you know, like we can really cure

11:35

insanity with these different hospitals. It

11:39

was a revolutionary idea. Change

11:42

a person's outside environment,

11:44

and they'll change internally.

11:48

But in practical terms, what

11:51

does the infrastructure of

11:53

calm, quietude look like?

11:56

In the 1840s, a physician in

11:58

Philadelphia came up with an answer.

12:01

Thomas Kirk Bride, who was a

12:03

psychiatrist, was very devoted to taking

12:05

care of people with mental health

12:08

issues. And, you know, it's

12:10

this whole idea that if you just get

12:12

away from the normal pressures of life and

12:14

have a little time to breathe and to

12:16

enjoy the fresh air and to be taken

12:18

care of, then you'll get better and you

12:20

can return to life as a normal citizen.

12:23

That was Lidah Gibson. coordinator of the

12:26

Asylum Hill Project. Thomas

12:29

Kirkbride would later formalize his plan

12:32

into a magnum opus with a

12:34

magnum title, on the

12:36

construction, organization, and general arrangements of

12:38

hospitals for the insane with some

12:41

remarks on insanity and its treatment.

12:44

He was specific. The

12:46

plan included exact staff numbers, roles,

12:48

and even salaries. He

12:50

drew up measurements for rooms and

12:52

windows and the space between windows.

12:55

down to the inch. The

12:57

Kirkbride plan, the idea was that

12:59

you had to have a certain

13:02

amount of cubic feet of airspace

13:04

in order to get well. These

13:07

were rooms with really tall ceilings. They had

13:09

huge windows. The patients could open the windows

13:12

and you'll notice from the plan there's a

13:14

hall down the middle and then every room

13:16

on every side has a window. People

13:19

had their own rooms when it first started.

13:21

I mean this would be like a luxurious

13:23

dorm room. It called on.

13:26

The first was in Trenton, New Jersey. Other

13:29

states followed. The Mississippi State

13:31

Lunatic Asylum was one of the first dozen

13:33

in the country, and the first Kirkbride Hospital

13:35

in the Deep South. Just

13:39

to ground you in the timeline

13:41

real quick, the Mississippi State Lunatic

13:43

Asylum opened its doors in 1855.

13:45

It had taken five years to

13:48

complete at a cost of $175

13:50

,000. That's about $7

13:52

million in today's money. If

13:54

this level of benevolence and generosity

13:56

from Mississippians with mental illness seems

13:59

out of character for a state

14:01

government whose focus was keeping slavery

14:03

legal, don't worry. The

14:06

decision to build this asylum to

14:08

look after, quote, less fortunate Mississippians

14:10

does not buck the narrative you've

14:12

come to know. Let's

14:18

say it's the 1850s. You're a

14:21

Mississippi lawmaker trying to put a

14:23

shine on an image badly tarnished

14:25

by, I don't know, your

14:27

refusal to stop treating humans like

14:30

chattel? Maybe investing

14:32

in this monument to those enlightenment

14:34

ideals of individual liberty, natural rights,

14:36

and the social contract starts to

14:39

seem like a good way to

14:41

thumb your nose at all those

14:43

Yankees crying about the immorality of

14:46

slavery. A sort of,

14:48

see, we're not all bad. Perhaps

14:51

it's not so pointed in

14:53

the institutional records, but you

14:55

read between the lines and

14:57

you say, you know, look

15:00

at what we do for

15:02

those unfortunates among us. They

15:04

did not use the words

15:06

that would be acceptable today.

15:09

And this became something that

15:12

they could point to. This

15:14

was the most impressive structure

15:16

in the state. that remained

15:18

after the Civil War. This

15:21

was sort of a monument

15:23

to the goodness of Mississippi

15:25

leaders. And

15:28

that's exactly what a nurse named

15:30

Darothea Dix was banking on. You've

15:34

probably heard her name before because

15:36

Dix almost single -handedly created the

15:38

first generation of state asylums. In

15:41

the 1840s, Darothea Dix turned Kirkbride's

15:43

asylum plan into something of a

15:46

road show. lobbying state

15:48

legislatures in the north and the south

15:50

to build these hospitals. Reading

15:53

about Dorothy Addix was very

15:55

instructive to me on the

15:57

relationships of mental hospitals in

15:59

the south versus the north

16:01

in an environment of growing

16:03

abolition. She began her career

16:05

as a teacher. But

16:07

on March 28, 1841, the

16:10

35 -year -old went to teach a Sunday

16:12

school class at East Cambridge House of Corrections

16:14

in Massachusetts. There, she

16:17

found groups of women experiencing

16:19

psychiatric conditions. They were

16:21

chained in dirty, unheated cells. Many

16:24

had never committed a crime, but were locked

16:27

up with violent felons. They'd

16:29

been starved, tortured, and

16:31

sexually assaulted. From

16:33

that day forward, she became a tireless

16:35

advocate for better treatment for people with

16:38

mental illness. And Dorothy

16:40

Addix is one of the heroines

16:42

of the humane treatment. of insane

16:44

people in institutions, especially this Kirkbride

16:46

model, which was supposed to kind

16:48

of separate out and bring them

16:50

in. It's a whole architecture of

16:52

sanity in that way. In

16:55

Mississippi, she presented the state legislature with

16:57

the findings from a study she'd done.

16:59

She told them how Mississippians with mental

17:02

illness were living in poverty and all

17:04

alone, often, quote, chained

17:06

in closets and attics, in

17:08

jails or dungeons. Mississippi

17:11

lawmakers were blown away. They

17:13

appropriated the full amount requested,

17:16

$50 ,000, for the

17:18

construction of a new state asylum. And

17:21

then they made their first mistake, because

17:24

they picked a site right at

17:26

the thickest part of that Yazoo

17:29

clay. The

17:31

foundation was laid, and

17:34

then relayed. More building delays,

17:37

more structural problems. The

17:45

Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum

17:47

finally opened its doors

17:49

more than $125 ,000

17:52

over that initial budget.

17:54

But it was a beautiful

17:56

neoclassical building with a 35

17:58

-foot tall portico supported by

18:01

six Doric columns, visible

18:03

all the way down to Fortification Street

18:05

about a mile away. It

18:07

had a capacity for 250 patients.

18:10

Remember that number. The

18:14

grandiosity of the architecture speaks to

18:16

the grand plans Mississippi had for

18:18

the place. This wasn't

18:20

a warehouse for the community's problems.

18:23

Warehouses don't get columns and cupolas. This

18:26

was a place that would cure people.

18:29

After all, this was the era

18:31

of rapidly evolving medical treatment. In

18:35

the 19th century, doctors began to

18:37

link dirt and filth with disease.

18:40

Cities began installing sewage

18:42

and sanitation systems. Germs

18:45

themselves still hadn't been discovered, but

18:47

concepts of germ theory were there.

18:50

A smallpox vaccine, cholera's connection

18:52

to contaminated water. Science

18:55

was beginning to conquer physical maladies.

18:58

Why should disease of the mind be

19:00

any different? There's

19:03

something else we haven't told you about

19:06

Dorothea Dix. Something

19:10

that probably helped her connect with lawmakers

19:12

and the antebellum self. She,

19:16

in fact, was very, I

19:18

would say, very anti -black racist. Dorothy

19:21

Addix didn't link black people. And

19:24

she thought that insane people were treated worse than

19:26

black people. So southern legislators

19:28

loved her. And

19:31

when black patients were admitted, their

19:33

quality of care was substantially

19:36

lower. Said they were

19:38

initially a separate wing for the

19:41

Black patients, and then very quickly

19:43

they built annexes off the back

19:45

that were three stories as well.

19:47

But, you know, obviously they weren't

19:50

as big and spacious as the

19:52

initial structure. Meaning these

19:54

facilities for the Black patients? They

19:56

never even tried to adhere to

19:59

the Kirkbride plan, which was the

20:01

whole reason the asylum was built

20:03

in the first place. In

20:10

order for the, quote, curative properties

20:12

of the Kirkbride model to work,

20:14

the patients need physical space, big

20:17

private rooms, fresh air, careful attention

20:20

from doctors and nurses. And

20:23

if patients aren't recovering enough to be

20:25

released, it creates a backlog, crowding.

20:28

And then even the patients who

20:31

could have been helped by the

20:33

Kirkbride plan are no longer getting

20:35

better. Part

20:37

of the reason for the overcrowding? Many

20:40

of the people living and dying at the

20:42

Old Asylum weren't mentally ill. That's

20:45

after the break. And

21:08

he was just staring at me. And they

21:10

had secrets of their own to share. Um,

21:13

Gilbert came. I'm

21:15

the son of Jeremy

21:18

Linscott. I was no

21:20

longer just telling the story. I

21:22

was part of it. Every time I hear about

21:24

my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's

21:26

just straight evil. I was becoming

21:28

the bridge between a killer and the son he'd

21:31

never known. If the cops and everything would

21:33

have done their job properly, my dad would have

21:35

been in jail. I would have never existed. I

21:38

never expected to find myself in this

21:40

place. Now, I

21:42

need to tell you how I got here. At the end

21:45

of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone

21:48

Valley Season 2. Jeremy.

21:51

Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen

21:54

to new episodes of Bone Valley Season

21:56

2 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple

21:58

Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

22:01

And to hear the entire new

22:03

season, add free with exclusive content,

22:06

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus

22:08

on Apple Podcasts. I'm Soledad O

22:10

'Brien, and on my podcast, Murder

22:13

on the Toe Path, I'm taking

22:15

you back to the 1960s. Mary

22:17

Pinchomeyer was a painter who lived

22:19

in Georgetown in Washington, D .C.

22:22

Every day, she took a daily

22:24

walk along the Toe Path near

22:26

the E &O Canal. So when

22:28

she was killed in a wealthy

22:30

neighborhood, She had been shot twice

22:32

in the head and in the

22:35

back behind the heart. The police

22:37

arrived in a heartbeat. Within

22:39

40 minutes, a man named Raymond Crump

22:41

Jr. was arrested. He

22:44

was found nearby, soaking wet,

22:46

and he was black. Only

22:48

one woman dared defend him.

22:50

Civil rights lawyer, Dubby Roundtree.

22:54

Join me as we unravel this

22:56

story with a crazy twist. Because

22:58

what most people didn't know

23:00

is that Mary was connected

23:03

to a very powerful man.

23:05

I pledge you that we

23:07

shall neither commit nor provoke

23:09

aggression. John F. Kennedy.

23:12

Listen to Murder on the Topat

23:14

with Soledad O 'Brien on the

23:16

iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

23:18

you get your podcasts. We'll

23:23

return to your podcast in a moment.

23:25

This is Dave Kalen, Jimmy Jam, and

23:27

Kelsey Webb for us. Yep,

23:29

you have to listen to us. We have

23:32

a radio show on WNCI 97 .9, and

23:34

you must listen or we will steal your

23:36

car. Only if it's a Kia. Hey,

23:39

someone stole my daughter's Kia show. Oh,

23:41

sorry. Hurry up, they want to get

23:43

back to the podcast. Yeah, just listen to our show

23:45

every weekday morning on WNCI. And you can also listen

23:47

on the iHeart app at Dave and Jimmy. We're not

23:49

going to steal your car. The

23:53

largest art museum in the state? The Mississippi

23:55

Museum of Art connects Mississippi to the world

23:57

and the power of art to the power

23:59

of Located in downtown

24:02

Jackson, the museum's permanent collection is free

24:04

to the public. National and

24:06

international exhibitions rotate throughout the year,

24:08

allowing visitors to experience works from

24:10

around the world. The gardens

24:13

and expansive lawn at the Mississippi Museum

24:15

of Art are home to art installations

24:17

and a variety of events for all

24:19

ages. Plan your

24:21

visit today at msmuseumart

24:24

.org. That's msmuseumart .org.

24:30

This right here is very interesting.

24:32

It's a register for the Mississippi

24:34

State Lunatic Cthulom. While

24:37

at the Whitfield Museum, my producer

24:39

Rebecca and I came across a

24:41

giant ledger, easily five inches thick

24:43

with hundreds of pages. Each

24:46

page was a list of names,

24:48

then census details like gender, age,

24:50

race, written in neat

24:52

cursive. along with the reason each

24:54

patient was admitted. These

25:22

were some of the causes for

25:24

institutionalization noted during patient intakes. With

25:27

so many possible reasons for admission,

25:30

maybe it's no surprise that the place

25:32

got overcrowded. Yes, so the

25:34

Kirkbride plan in general and certainly

25:36

the institution in Mississippi was established

25:38

for those people who could be

25:41

cured. It was never meant

25:43

as a place to where people would

25:45

live out their lives. But there were

25:47

no other options. So what do you

25:50

do with somebody who is having epileptic

25:52

seizures all day long? What do you

25:54

do with people who are never going

25:56

to get better? And,

25:59

you know, this idea that people

26:01

who had been dethroned of reason

26:03

were the only people that this

26:05

institution could serve was just not

26:07

realistic from the beginning. And I

26:09

think that's the popular narrative that

26:11

they just said, you know, okay,

26:13

we're going to just become everything

26:15

to all these people who need

26:17

different things. They simply were reacting

26:19

to the situation at the time.

26:21

And, you know, in a couple

26:23

of the reports, people say, what

26:25

are we supposed to do when

26:27

people show up at the door?

26:29

Are we supposed to just leave

26:31

them out on the streets? And

26:33

so there were a lot of

26:35

people who were accepted in the

26:37

asylum and there was an acknowledgement.

26:40

that they weren't going to get better. So

26:42

the philosophy never really changed. It

26:45

was simply that they had to

26:47

deal with the cards they were

26:49

dealt. One

26:52

of the cards Mississippi got dealt, a

26:54

disease called pelagra. You

26:56

heard about it from Wayne Lee, the grave dowser. It's

27:00

that nutritional deficiency that killed his grandfather.

27:03

He wasn't crazy. He was just starving. I

27:06

mean, I had never even heard of Pylegra

27:08

before. So, Pylegra was

27:10

a nutritional deficiency that just

27:13

swept the Southeast, starting in

27:15

about 1910, and

27:17

it's characterized by what

27:19

they call the 4Ds,

27:22

dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia,

27:25

death. In that order,

27:27

people from all walks of life

27:30

would come down with Pylegra. Of

27:33

course, the dementia wasn't apparent

27:35

until close to the end.

27:38

So many, many patients, especially

27:40

those from the Delta, were

27:42

admitted with Pelagra. And

27:45

in the institutional reports, they talk about,

27:47

you know, by the time they get

27:49

here, it's too late to do anything.

27:54

Pelagra was not only an epidemic. For

27:57

decades, it remained a medical mystery

27:59

with a geographic preference, the

28:02

Southeast. By

28:04

the late 1930s, 3 million

28:07

Americans total had contracted Pelagra,

28:09

most of them southerners. Mississippi

28:12

was ground zero of the

28:14

Pelagra epidemic, which is why

28:16

a doctor named Joseph Goldberger headed there to

28:18

study it in 1914. Dr.

28:21

Goldberger was a physician with the U

28:23

.S. Hygienic Laboratory, the progenitor

28:25

of today's National Institutes of Health.

28:28

So he did an

28:30

experiment with prisoners from

28:32

the Rankin County Penitentiary.

28:34

These were, quote, volunteers

28:37

who were then fed

28:40

a very specific diet,

28:42

and they were able

28:44

to understand that Pylegra

28:46

came from this niacin

28:48

deficiency. See, Mississippi's

28:51

old asylum might have begun life

28:53

in the wealthiest state in the

28:55

country. But by the

28:57

1920s, Mississippi had assumed a position

28:59

we're all familiar with, the

29:02

country's poorest. Because if

29:04

you look at the old pictures

29:06

of sharecroppers on the farms in

29:08

the Delta, that cotton

29:11

is planted right up to the

29:13

shacks because they wanted to use

29:15

every inch of land for cotton.

29:17

Instead, they stopped growing their own

29:19

vegetables and raising hogs or raising

29:21

cattle or anything like that, and

29:23

they bought everything from the company

29:25

store. I think it's like

29:27

fatback and molasses. Southern

29:30

doctors found Goldberger's evidence

29:32

offensive. I mean,

29:34

here is this Jewish doctor from

29:36

New York City parachuting in just

29:38

to embarrass a whole region by

29:41

calling them poor. Goldberger

29:47

had figured out that brewers' yeast, the

29:49

stuff you used to make beer, could

29:51

send Palagra packing. But

29:53

his solution wouldn't be implemented at any

29:56

scale until years later during one of

29:58

the greatest natural disasters in U .S.

30:00

history, the 1927

30:02

Mississippi River floods. Hundreds

30:06

of thousands of people lost their homes.

30:09

Tent cities sprung up along levees from

30:11

Memphis all the way down to Louisiana.

30:14

And off of Goldberger's advice, the

30:16

Red Cross began adding breweries to

30:18

its food rations. And that's

30:20

why we have enriched foods now. That's

30:23

what it means. The advent

30:25

of enriched foods was from

30:27

Pelagra. This

30:31

understanding of Pelagra's progression complicates the narrative

30:33

we're inclined to jump to when it

30:35

comes to the old asylum. I

30:37

know that a lot of the work that's

30:39

been done on asylums in the South

30:42

in general, assumes that patients came to

30:44

the asylums and were not fed well

30:46

and got pellegra at the asylum and

30:48

then ended up dying of pellegra. I

30:50

think the story is much different. Counterintuitively,

30:53

in terms of preventative medicine,

30:56

aka diet, the

30:58

old asylum might have been one of the

31:00

better places in the state. Stay

31:02

with me here. The asylum's

31:05

1 ,300 acres included a

31:07

farm. And it wasn't just

31:09

any old thing. It was

31:11

an award winner, one that people

31:13

came from all around just to

31:15

see. They raised cattle. They had

31:18

an award -winning hog operation, award

31:20

-winning poultry operation. And

31:22

my feeling is that patients

31:25

may have been better fed

31:27

at the asylum than they

31:29

were at their homes. You

31:32

see the farm's bounty laid out

31:34

in the superintendent's biannual reports to

31:36

the legislature, which, to be fair,

31:38

we're always trying to paint the

31:40

asylum in the best possible light.

31:42

Still, between June of 1911 and

31:44

July of 1913, which was just

31:46

a couple of years before Dr.

31:48

Goldberger was sent down to Mississippi,

31:52

the vegetable garden alone spanned

31:54

about 60 acres. All

31:56

of this maintained, of course, by

31:58

the patients themselves. But...

32:01

polagra patients arrived too far gone

32:04

for diet to do much good.

32:06

And so the death rate for

32:09

people with polagra was just incredible.

32:12

I think it's a condemnation

32:14

of sort of the Mississippi

32:16

society rather than the asylum

32:18

itself. The

32:30

death rate for Polagra was incredible.

32:34

I mean, we've got it. It wiped out entire

32:36

swaths of the South. And we've

32:38

also got a handle on the 4Ds,

32:40

the last two of which are dementia

32:42

and death. Polagra patients

32:45

who were sent to the asylum

32:47

were already on death's door when

32:49

they arrived. Now,

32:52

overlay this information with the asylum's

32:54

high death rates. with patient stays

32:56

of just a few months before

32:58

those patients passed. To

33:01

be clear, I'm not saying that

33:03

the old asylum was a rose -tinged

33:05

haven, altruistic to its

33:07

core. Neither is LIDA.

33:10

There were people who committed suicide

33:12

and there were people who, you

33:14

know, were victims of violent patient

33:17

-on -patient violence. I am absolutely

33:19

positive there were patients who were

33:21

victims of sexual violence, of, by,

33:23

you know, the caregivers. I'm

33:26

not saying that didn't happen. I'm saying

33:28

if we only focus on that, we

33:30

miss a lot of the story. This

33:33

context really complicated my understanding of

33:35

the old asylum. In

33:38

a lot of ways, intentionally or not, the

33:41

asylum was more like a hospice for many of

33:43

its patients. You can't just draw

33:45

a straight line from the high death

33:47

rates to mistreatment. Poor medical

33:50

care, poor treatment, those

33:52

things happened. But there's

33:54

zigzags along the way. And

33:56

I say 30 ,000 patients approximately,

33:59

and about 10 ,000 died based

34:01

on the institutional records, and then

34:04

2 ,500 patients were there when

34:06

Whitfield opened. So that means that

34:08

17 ,500 patients approximately were treated

34:10

and released. We never

34:13

hear those stories. I

34:15

mean, I've run across maybe a

34:17

couple of stories about, oh yeah,

34:19

my great uncle went there, was

34:22

at the old asylum for a little while, and then

34:24

he came home and he was fine. I mean, we

34:26

just don't get those stories. There's

34:30

no way for us to know why those

34:32

stories didn't get passed down. Could

34:35

be it's shame, or could be

34:37

it's just too mundane to enter

34:39

the family lore. I

34:42

mean, I can't imagine sitting my kids

34:44

down to tell them about their great

34:46

uncle's time and physical therapy. And

34:49

maybe those success stories are what helped family

34:51

members at the time make peace with the

34:53

choice to send their loved ones to the

34:55

old asylum. Because remember, patients

34:58

were rarely the ones admitting themselves.

35:01

Somewhere along the line, someone made the

35:04

decision that they were better off in

35:06

the asylum. Maybe it was

35:08

law enforcement, the judicial system,

35:10

or maybe it was family

35:12

members grasping at straws. I

35:16

hear that a lot. Often people

35:19

were admitted to the asylum because

35:21

they were a danger to themselves

35:23

or others. There's several stories about

35:26

people setting fire to the house.

35:29

And you think about it, people go, well, why

35:31

was fire such a big deal? I'm like, well,

35:33

because that was the way houses were heated. That

35:36

was the way people

35:39

cooked. The danger

35:41

of sort of being alone

35:43

in a household. when

35:46

there's something going on with your

35:49

mind, with a lot worse than

35:51

probably than it is now. I

35:54

do think it comes down to can

35:56

I handle this? Is this in the

35:58

best interest of my loved one to

36:00

keep this person at home or in

36:03

the community? Is it simply

36:05

a way to marginalize the people

36:07

that we don't want to look

36:09

at in our community? Possibly.

36:12

I mean, all of these things I think are at play.

36:15

I do hate the word marginalized

36:17

though. And I'll tell

36:19

you why. Yes, people

36:22

were sent to the asylum. We

36:25

are looking at that from our perspective though.

36:28

Again, they came to the

36:30

asylum, at least initially it

36:32

was a place where there

36:34

were resources, there was food,

36:36

there was even entertainment. There

36:38

were sidewalks and landscaping and

36:40

plants. The patients

36:43

there Their lives didn't end.

36:46

You know, they simply entered into a new

36:48

community. Regardless

36:51

of why patients ended up in the

36:53

asylum, their lives didn't end when

36:55

they walked through those doors. They

36:58

just changed. To

37:01

find those examples, you

37:03

just have to dig below the surface.

37:06

That's coming up on Under

37:08

Yazoo Clay. Something

37:20

unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott

37:22

confessed to killing Michelle Schofield

37:25

in Bone Valley Season 1.

37:27

I just knew he was

37:29

a kid. Long, silent voices

37:31

from his past came forward.

37:34

And he was just staring at me. And

37:36

they had secrets of their own to share.

37:39

Gilbert came. I'm

37:41

the son of Jeremy

37:43

when Scott. I was

37:45

no longer just telling the story. I

37:48

was part of it. Every time I hear

37:50

about my dad is, oh, he's a killer.

37:53

He's just straight evil. I was becoming the

37:55

bridge between a killer and the son he'd

37:57

never known. If the cops and everything

37:59

would have done their job properly, my dad would have been

38:01

in jail. I would have never existed. I

38:04

never expected to find myself in this

38:06

place. Now, I

38:08

need to tell you how I got here. At

38:11

the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone

38:14

Valley, season two, Jeremy.

38:17

Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Mary

38:43

Pinchow -Meyer was a painter who

38:45

lived in Georgetown in Washington, D

38:47

.C. Every day, she took a

38:50

daily walk along a towpath near

38:52

the ENO Canal. So when she

38:54

was killed in a wealthy neighborhood...

38:56

She had been shot twice in

38:59

the head and in the back

39:01

behind the heart. The police arrived

39:03

in a heartbeat. Within

39:05

40 minutes, a man named Raymond

39:07

Crump Jr. was arrested. He was

39:10

found nearby, soaking wet. and he

39:12

was black. Only one

39:14

woman dared defend him. Civil

39:17

rights lawyer, W. Roundtree. Join

39:20

me as we unravel this

39:22

story with a crazy twist,

39:24

because what most people didn't

39:26

know is that Mary was

39:28

connected to a very powerful

39:30

man. I pledge you that

39:32

we shall neither commit nor

39:34

provoke aggression. John F.

39:36

Kennedy. Listen to murder on

39:39

the tow path to Soledad O 'Brien

39:41

on the I heart radio app Apple

39:43

podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

40:00

That's not how it goes? That's not how anything

40:02

goes. NB's really like a robot. One of the

40:04

best DJs I've ever. Validex. Charlamagne is the wild

40:06

card. And I'm about to give somebody the credit

40:08

they deserve for being stupid. I know that's right.

40:11

What is wrong with ya? Listen to the

40:13

Breakfast Club weekday mornings from 6 to 10

40:15

on 1067 The Beat. Columbus is real hip

40:17

hop and R &B. So

40:23

this is the soil that

40:25

is getting sucked in? Yes.

40:27

The famous clay. Oh, yes.

40:30

Yes, it's terrible. It's

40:34

terrible, terrible dirt. We're in a building

40:36

on the Medical Center's campus that feels

40:38

more like a warehouse. It's

40:41

at least 15 degrees colder than

40:43

Jackson's April weather outside. And

40:45

there's burnt orange -yazoo clay all over

40:47

the cement floor. And burnt

40:50

orange -yazoo clay all over everything.

40:53

Oh, wow. Oh, this was not what I was

40:55

expecting at all. No. So for

40:57

one thing, it's very dirty because

40:59

it's an active archaeological field lab,

41:01

but it was originally the laundry

41:03

building for the hospital. And that's

41:05

why all the big pipes and

41:07

the giant boilers in the corner.

41:10

We're here to meet Dr. Jennifer Mack. You

41:13

heard from her briefly in the first

41:15

episode. She's the lead bioarchaeologist of the

41:17

Asylum Hill Project. Just in

41:19

case you, like me, are fuzzy on

41:21

what that means. Bioarchaeology

41:24

is the study specifically

41:26

of human remains from

41:29

archaeological contexts. This

41:31

is specifically the study of burials,

41:33

essentially. Dr. Mack

41:35

is small and wiry. She has long,

41:37

dark hair, and despite the gravity of

41:39

her job, a light, goofy sense

41:41

of humor. We spoke inside,

41:43

but it's easy to picture her out in the

41:46

field. Since 2017, she's

41:48

been elbow deep in Yazoo clay,

41:50

working to map out the cemetery

41:52

and piece together the story of

41:54

the asylum it belonged to. It's

41:57

easier for people to identify when

41:59

there are a few artifacts to

42:01

tell a little bit about a

42:03

person's personality. You'd be like,

42:05

oh yeah, I can totally, I know that

42:07

chick. She walked us over to a series

42:10

of folding tables covered with brown paper. It

42:12

looked like the setup for a crawfish boil.

42:14

But she'd use the paper to protect artifacts

42:17

she'd pulled for us. I

42:19

cover everything because the air conditioning

42:21

and heat blows so hard and

42:23

then it blows dust over everything.

42:27

The covering was totally a practical

42:29

choice on Dr. Max's part. It's

42:32

the only way to keep that yazu clay

42:34

dust from taking over again. But

42:36

the effect made for a delightful reveal

42:38

with each new object we came to.

42:41

She picked up a tiny bit

42:43

of gold. There's a gold

42:45

nugget. Why would there be such a

42:47

tiny gold Oh, it's a filling. The

42:49

filling survived without the tooth around it.

42:51

As they peel back each layer of

42:53

clay, Dr. Mack and her team are

42:55

exposing new insights into the people that

42:58

were laid to rest in these graves

43:00

and the people who interred them into

43:02

life at the asylum. I'd

43:04

love to tell you about one

43:06

particular pattern. that delights me, though

43:08

it's not about the patients. Individuals

43:12

were wrapped in a winding sheet that

43:14

was pinned, and so we usually find

43:16

two, three, four safety pins in a

43:18

burial. There's

43:20

a set of graves with

43:23

what I, in my head

43:25

I call her like the

43:27

compulsive nurse. Someone

43:29

who, for a short time, was

43:32

preparing bodies for burial was very

43:34

finicky about the winding sheets. So

43:36

instead of three or four pins,

43:38

there's many as 18 safety pins.

43:41

And that is a personality. That's not

43:43

a policy change. Obviously, it's

43:45

a personality. There are five graves

43:47

in a row that have way

43:49

too many pins. And then there

43:51

are a few nearby. There's a

43:53

total of 10 that I presume

43:55

were prepared by this same individual.

43:58

And then it stops, and we've

44:00

gone pretty far out. We have

44:03

not found anymore. So either that

44:05

person was no longer asked to

44:07

prepare bodies for burial, or someone

44:09

said, hey, quit wasting all the

44:11

pins. I'm not sure. But we

44:13

have this little glimpse of one

44:15

personality of a person who either

44:17

worked at the asylum or could

44:19

have been a fellow patient. The

44:26

only part of the old

44:28

asylum that's left on asylum

44:31

Hill is the cemetery and

44:33

There's little to no documentation

44:35

of or about these burials

44:38

So the story of the

44:40

cemetery is being plucked from

44:43

the clay grave by grave

44:45

in piece by piece As

44:47

far as we know We

44:50

haven't had any sort of

44:53

Documents, but of course it's early days

44:55

in research. We haven't

44:57

had any oral histories about

44:59

families being able to attend

45:01

the burial but not able

45:04

to claim the body. So

45:06

my interpretation has been more

45:09

that patients and staff preparing

45:11

the bodies or doing the

45:13

work of the actual burial

45:15

are the ones who had

45:17

these expressions of affection. Each

45:20

item that Dr. Mack reveals beneath the

45:22

butcher paper is something she and her

45:24

team have found while conducting the dig

45:26

of the cemetery. That

45:28

means that each item was intentionally

45:31

left with someone in their final

45:33

resting place. See, it's

45:35

got the ribs on the back.

45:38

And this was found in

45:41

Burial 157, right above

45:43

where the coffin had decayed. She's

45:45

showing us a piece of broken

45:47

tile, more than a foot long.

45:50

We're pretty sure we know where

45:52

the tile came from in the

45:54

1923 superintendent's report. There's a

45:56

description of having remodeled all of

45:58

the bathrooms the asylum and replaced

46:00

all the tile. So

46:03

what's it doing in the

46:05

burial? Well,

46:08

I had a thought. She

46:10

brought that thought to the descendant, Dr.

46:13

Elizabeth West. Dr. West

46:15

also has an impressive CV. She's

46:18

a member of the Asylum Hill

46:20

Research Consortium and also the director

46:22

of academics for Georgia State University's

46:24

Center for Studies on Africa and

46:26

its Diaspora. And so

46:28

I spoke with Elizabeth West and

46:31

it was her opinion that she

46:33

thought it could indeed be like

46:35

an adaptive expression of the African

46:38

-American mortuary tradition of placing ceramic

46:40

or glass domestic items in the

46:42

coffin or on top of the

46:45

coffin at burial. And

46:47

the reason this is so interesting is

46:49

that the nature of this, being a

46:52

big piece of broken tile instead of

46:54

like a lovely cup and saucer, sort

46:57

of suggests that patients were involved in

46:59

the work of doing the grave digging

47:01

and burying the dead. Because if you're

47:03

a patient in an asylum, you can't

47:06

go to the cafeteria and say, hey,

47:08

I'd like a cup and saucer to

47:10

bury with my friend. I

47:12

don't think that would go over well. But

47:15

you can. Take what you can

47:17

find just like enslaved people made

47:20

use of what they could and

47:22

use that to express the same

47:24

thing. So it's a make -do

47:26

solution when other materials aren't available.

47:29

And we've got this tile. We

47:32

have another piece of tile that was found

47:34

in another grave. There was

47:36

a broken crockery vessel in

47:38

another grave and then a

47:41

large rusted can. in

47:43

another, so that we found this pattern

47:45

so far of objects that you could

47:47

have pulled off of a discard pile,

47:50

looked very much like it had them

47:52

placed there, as it

47:54

was being pulled up by

47:56

the backhoe. I

47:58

love this. It's

48:01

what Dr. Didlake has been talking about, that

48:03

southern ethos, that reverence for the grave,

48:06

has been with the cemetery from the

48:08

beginning. Sometimes it is

48:10

just an empty medicine bottle and a spoon.

48:13

It doesn't have to be something elaborate,

48:15

but I would think that if it

48:17

was family coming from outside, it wouldn't

48:19

be a broken piece of building material

48:21

from the asylum. Dr.

48:24

Mack leads us over to a pair

48:26

of brown shoes that look almost like

48:29

they've been sculpted from dirt. So

48:31

these were, yeah, they were alongside the body.

48:34

And my interpretation is

48:37

that It was an

48:39

item that was almost

48:42

forgotten during the burial

48:45

preparation. The body

48:47

is already pinned up in the

48:49

winding sheet, placed in the coffin,

48:51

and oh wait, we

48:53

forgot to put the boots on the feet. Oh,

48:55

these were his favorite boots, let's not forget

48:58

these. So they were placed in the coffin

49:00

because it was important to the people who

49:02

were doing the burial to do that proper

49:04

thing, but then couldn't access the feet anymore.

49:06

At least that's my theory. She

49:09

said she's also found dentures tucked inside

49:11

the same way. You can't reopen grandma's

49:13

mouth, but you can make sure she

49:15

doesn't go to heaven without her dentures.

49:22

But sometimes the value of the

49:24

objects doesn't require so much guesswork.

49:27

These rings are more like what

49:30

we commonly find. And we have

49:32

found a lot, a lot, but

49:34

rings are the most common personal

49:36

artifact that we find. She

49:39

holds up a gold ring. Alina,

49:42

and notice there's an inscription. This

49:45

is one of

49:47

my favorite artifacts.

49:50

It appears to be a solid

49:53

gold wedding band or 18

49:55

karat gold wedding band and inscribed

49:57

inside it says ever true to

50:00

the Which is very sweet

50:02

and Even though it's a small

50:04

ring based on the width of

50:06

thinking that it was on

50:08

the hand of a male but

50:11

unfortunately the Skeletal remains were almost

50:13

non -existent in this grave and

50:16

I really like this artifact not

50:18

just because To me, I

50:20

feel like it's a symbol of a truly loving

50:22

marriage because if you're just having to marry somebody,

50:24

you don't get that engraved in your ring, right?

50:28

Or maybe you do. But also because

50:30

it combats the assumption that people make

50:32

that, oh, everyone who worked in this

50:34

island was evil and they would have

50:36

stolen anything valuable that the patients had.

50:38

Obviously, that's not the case because this

50:41

is a very valuable ring that got

50:43

interred with this person. It's

50:45

one of those objects that doesn't just

50:47

point to the life that patients lived

50:49

inside the asylum, but the life they

50:51

had lived on the outside. I

50:55

could tell from the way Dr. Mack looked at

50:57

this ring, the way she held it, that

50:59

it was unique. It seemed

51:01

personal. And then I

51:04

remembered something I'd noticed when we walked in

51:06

that day. A tattoo

51:08

on Dr. Mack's foot. May

51:11

I ask about your tattoo because it

51:13

says ever true? It does. It

51:15

does. Um, ever true to

51:17

thee? Just like that ring? Yes. I'm

51:20

going to try to tell the story. So

51:23

that ring was found by my husband.

51:25

Oh, I can't do it. Hold on.

51:27

Sorry. Normally I'm not like this

51:29

and I can tell everybody about my tattoo. So

51:36

my husband Dustin Clark was the crew chief of

51:38

this project, and he's the one that found the

51:41

gold ring that said, ever true to thee. And

51:43

he was very proud of it. And he kept

51:45

telling everyone that it was the best artifact. And

51:48

everyone who thought they found something good said, no, no,

51:50

it's not as good as the ring that I found.

51:53

So unfortunately, he passed away in August.

51:55

So I have a tattoo on my

51:58

foot with two coffins, one for him,

52:00

one for me, and a snake because

52:02

he loved snakes. and a

52:04

skull because that's what I do for a living.

52:06

And then we've got the ring on there, and

52:08

then it says, ever true to thee, just like

52:10

the ring that he found. And

52:18

so Dr. Matt continues working on the

52:20

Asylum Hill site, uncovering

52:23

new artifacts and new stories of

52:25

the last people who touched them.

52:28

There's a forward motion through the grief.

52:31

That seemed to be a through line for each

52:33

of the descendants we spoke with as well. Even

52:36

if what you learn isn't positive,

52:39

there's catharsis in discovery.

52:42

All this, born out of a

52:44

place we associate with shadows, shame,

52:48

and secrecy. And

52:50

still, this is a

52:52

place that defies definition. And

52:55

it should. When

53:02

I first started this project, and I

53:04

think the goals of the consortium members,

53:06

the scholars who were involved from the

53:08

beginning, certainly Dr. Didlake, was

53:11

to sort of paint a portrait

53:13

of what life was like at

53:15

the asylum. And

53:18

unfortunately, I think that's very,

53:20

very difficult to do. And

53:22

when we try to sort

53:24

of paint a portrait of

53:26

what life was like, or

53:28

create a picture of what

53:30

life was like at the

53:32

asylum. Number one, it was

53:34

different from one year to the next, one

53:36

decade to the next. It

53:39

was different depending on your

53:42

condition. I'm not

53:44

naive enough to think that

53:46

the black patients were treated

53:48

as well as the white

53:50

patients, but I also think

53:52

sort of dismissing the superintendents

53:55

and the people who work

53:57

there because they were clearly

53:59

entrenched in systemic racism, basically.

54:02

I think if we simply ignore

54:05

the stories, because of that, we

54:07

miss a lot of the story.

54:10

So I've tried to have

54:12

an open mind about possibly,

54:14

I mean, was there anything

54:17

positive about the fact that

54:19

black patients were admitted there

54:21

and treated there? And

54:24

I think in some ways, trying

54:26

to paint these really broad strokes,

54:29

is less respectful to the patients

54:31

than we should be. And

54:33

if there's one thing we know about LIDA

54:36

and the rest of the Asylum Hill project,

54:38

they're gonna err on the side of

54:40

respect. For Dr.

54:42

West, going beyond those broad

54:45

brush strokes is key. Brushing

54:47

the dirt off her great -uncle Hillman's

54:49

story finally gave her insight to her

54:51

own grandfather. I understand

54:54

and appreciate myself and my

54:56

family. in ways that

54:58

I had not before. The

55:01

pain of finding an ancestor

55:03

not too far back in

55:06

the past. This was a

55:08

person who my grandfather farmed

55:10

with. This was a person

55:13

who helped shape my grandfather,

55:15

who then shaped my mother,

55:18

who then shaped me. So it's not

55:20

like, you know, it's not like some

55:22

obscure figure. The place

55:24

itself, the asylum itself, and

55:27

the taboo of mental health,

55:29

how we look at that

55:31

in this country, all of

55:33

that is, I'm sure,

55:35

like, devastating to

55:38

think about, but I'm

55:40

not overly disturbed by

55:42

that because, you know,

55:45

health issues are health

55:47

issues, whether they're mental

55:49

or physical. And just

55:51

because people suffer from mental

55:54

health does not mean their

55:56

lives are not important

55:58

and phenomenal. And

56:01

when I think about

56:03

encountering this person through

56:05

the asylum and then

56:07

understanding that there are

56:10

thousands of more stories

56:12

like that here, it's

56:14

just mind boggling. Thousands

56:19

more stories, all

56:22

waiting to be uncovered and waiting to

56:24

be found. And what

56:26

does it mean to find someone? And

56:29

once they've been found, what

56:31

then? Will they

56:34

fade back into the rusted orange of

56:36

the Yazookle? Will

56:38

Jackson make space for them? That's

56:42

next on Under Yazookle.

56:45

Well, as soon as Jessica and I

56:47

walked down the hallway and saw the

56:49

sign, I just burst into tears. I

56:52

really didn't expect to do that. I

56:54

mean, it was just a sign. So

56:56

her brother said, when are

56:58

you bringing Zen home? And

57:00

he said, I don't know. Every time

57:03

I go, she gets further and further

57:05

away from me. And

57:07

then, yeah. And then, like I was

57:10

saying, you can make the end sort

57:12

of come to about this point. Perfect.

57:16

That'll be fine. Under

57:20

Yazoo Clay is executive produced by the

57:22

Mississippi Museum of Art in partnership with

57:24

Pod People. It's hosted by me, Larison

57:27

Campbell, and written and produced by Rebecca

57:29

Chassan and myself with help from Angela

57:31

Yee and Amy Machado, with editing and

57:33

sound design by Morgan Fuss and Erica

57:36

Wong, and thanks to Blue Dot Sessions

57:38

for music. Special thanks to

57:40

Betsy Bradley at the Mississippi Museum of

57:42

Art, as well as Leida Gibson at

57:44

the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities

57:47

at the University of Mississippi Medical Center,

57:49

visit Jackson and Jay and Dini Stein.

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