Rusk (Texas) State Penitentiary became Rusk State Hospital in 1919 when it was converted to a hospital for “Negro insane”. See Vanessa Jackson’s In Our Own Voice: African-American Stories of Oppression, Survival and Recovery in Mental Health Systems for an account of this hospital and more. I especially appreciated her account of a 1955 “rebellion” by African-American prisoners in the maximum-security unit led by nineteen-year-old Ben Riley, the spokesperson for demands for better counseling, organized exercise, and an end to beatings. During the event a group of patients hooked the hospital superintendent up to the electroconvulsive shock therapy apparatus and attempted to use it.
In searching for an image of Rusk State Hospital this morning, I found this photo in the collection of the John P. McGovern Library at the Texas (Houston) Medical Center. In a full-circle kind of synchronicity McGovern was my mother’s cousin.
As a psychiatric aide at the San Antonio State Hospital in 1954, I transported a difficult patient to Rusk. Have no recollection that it was for blacks, as this guy was caucasian.
Could have possibly been a patient for the maximum security unit established there in 1953 for mentally ill offenders throughout Texas? Skyview Maximum Security Unit.
The original desigantion of the Rusk State Hospital in 1917 was “The East Texas Hospital for the Negro Insane,” but prior to accepting the first patients, a delegation of Rusk citizens went to Austin to ask that the facility accept all races. Prior to receiving the first patients in 1919, the name was changed to the “East Texas Hospital for the Insane” in order to provide services for all races. From it’s opening, it was never a facility solely for African-Americans.
Kevin, thank you for clarifying. History is so often more complex than at first glance.