Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson - Hardcover

Burch, Susan; Joyner, Hannah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807831557 ISBN 13: 9780807831557

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007

Synopsis

Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent seventy-six years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including six in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life.

Using legal records, institutional files, and extensive oral history interviews--some conducted in sign language--Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner piece together the story of a deaf man accused in 1925 of attempted rape, found insane at a lunacy hearing, committed to the criminal ward of the State Hospital for the Colored Insane, castrated, forced to labor for the institution, and held at the hospital for more than seven decades. Junius Wilson's life was shaped by some of the major developments of twentieth-century America: Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement, deinstitutionalization, the rise of professional social work, and the emergence of the deaf and disability rights movements. In addition to offering a bottom-up history of life in a segregated mental institution, Burch and Joyner's work also enriches the traditional interpretation of Jim Crow by highlighting the complicated intersections of race and disability as well as of community and language.

This moving study expands the boundaries of what biography can and should be. There is much to learn and remember about Junius Wilson--and the countless others who have lived unspeakable histories.

About this title

Book Description:

"American deaf history is steeped with the presence of African American deaf people, but there is precious little written about them, or about black deaf schools and the sign language of black deaf communities. This book tells the story of one African American deaf man who was born in the early twentieth century, at a time when segregated black deaf schools were found in every state in the South, and when ignorance about sign languages and deaf people was deeply institutionalized. Through a blend of scholarship and skillful narrative, the authors guide the reader through a history of the twentieth century as it was lived by one man whose skin color and condition of deafness made him a victim of many institutional failures, condemning him to spend his entire adult life in a mental institution."--Carol Padden, University of California, San Diego

About the Author:

Susan Burch has taught history at Gallaudet University; Charles University, Czech Republic; and the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. She is author of Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 to World War II. Hannah Joyner is an independent scholar and author of From Pity to Pride: Growing Up Deaf in the Old South.

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0807831557
• ISBN 13: 9780807831557
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320