Boston Book Festival

This session examines shocking episodes in American History that are little known yet have an extraordinary impact on contemporary society. In Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum, award-winning journalist for NBC News, Antonia Hylton, tells how so-called “feebleminded” Blacks were rounded up and placed in asylums where they were put to work as indentured servants. To add insult to injury, insanity was blamed on freedom, not subhuman conditions. The lack of understanding and treatment of the mental health of Black people is a theme throughout. Pulitzer Prize winner and Yale historian David Blight, in Yale and Slavery: A History, brings to light Yale’s long and complex involvement in slavery and racism. Northeastern professor Caleb Gayle wrote We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power, to reveal the story of the Creek Nation, a Native tribe that both owned slaves and accepted Blacks as full citizens, at least until tribal leaders revoked that citizenship in the 70’s. Join GBH’s Executive Producer of American Experience, Cameo George, for an eye-opening exploration of little known episodes from American history that illustrate that the past is ever-present.