Memorializing Asylum Hill

In 2012, workers building a road on the University of Mississippi Medical Center campus came across human remains. They belonged to a cemetery that had once been attached to the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum, which operated as a treatment center for mentally ill people from 1855-1935. The Department of Anthropology at Mississippi State University, working with the medical center, ultimately exhumed 66 unidentified graves—a small percentage of what are thought to be 7,000 people buried nearby. Now, NEH funding is supporting the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s Asylum Hill project, which is tasked with building connections with descendants of people treated at asylum and ultimately memorializing those buried in its cemetery.

In 2019, an NEH grant helped the project embark upon its community outreach. The project sponsored a history day, which encouraged descendants to connect with the medical center and bring in historical items documents to be digitized. The project hosted presentations and lectures on the history of the center and current ethical concerns about relocating the graves. In addition, funding from the Mississippi Humanities Council helped the project create a documentary offering perspective on the Asylum’s history.

An NEH grant awarded in 2020 is now helping the project prepare a digital archive related to the history of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum, as well as develop stronger ties with descendants of patients. There has not been much scholarly research on the Asylum, and the primary source documents related to it have been largely dispersed. Pulling these documents together into a digital archive that includes oral histories, newspaper articles, and Board of Health documents, will allow the project to tell a more accurate and nuanced story. The goal, ultimately, is to create a resource that will contribute to historical understanding of how mental illness has been treated while honoring the lives lived in the Asylum.