
Unspeakable
The Story of Junius Wilson
Hannah Joyner(Author)
The University of North Carolina Press
Published on 19. November 2007
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-0-8078-3155-7 (ISBN)
Description
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.
More details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Edition type
New edition
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8078-3155-7 (9780807831557)
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E-Book
11/2007
The University of North Carolina Press
€19.49
Available for download
Person
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