I can't get Junius Wilson out of my mind
I read this at Disability Studies, Temple U. a few days ago and can't stop thinking about old Junius Wilson.
A 1994 NYT article says this:
Black and deaf, Junius Wilson was 28 years old when he was jailed, charged with assault with intent to rape. He was declared insane and sent to North Carolina's mental hospital for blacks. Then he was castrated.
That was in 1925. Decades later, the charges were dropped, but Mr. Wilson remained in a locked ward.
Now 96, Mr. Wilson was finally moved on Friday into his first real home in 68 years.
"Decades later." The charges were dropped five decades later. Yet the institution kept him locked up for almost two decades more. What caused a reassessment of his case when he was in his 70s?
I'll have to wait for the book, by Susan Birch and Hannah Joyner. But as Dis Hum announces, Susan Burch will be speaking about Wilson in Columbus, OH, in mid-November. Check Penny's post for the details.
Sadly, Wilson's problems as a deaf person with the criminal justice system are neither rare nor something that just happened decades ago. I don't have access to the entire article, but an abstract for a paper on "Obstacles Faced by Deaf People in the Criminal Justice System" by Vernon and Miller reports:
Deaf people, especially those who are not well educated, are at risk for serious injustices when they enter the criminal justice system. The present study describes these risks at all stages of the legal process, including arrest, trial, probation, prison, and parole. These dangers are greatest for those who are poorly educated, read at a fourth-grade level or lower, have poor communication skills (American Sign Language and English), and lack awareness of their legal rights. Primitive personality disorder (PPD) is the term mental health professionals use to describe this set of characteristics. The risks that the segment of the deaf population with PPD faces when its members run afoul of the law are described, a case history provided, and some relevant legal and interpreting issues are discussed. A case is made for applying the concept of linguistic incompetence to deaf individuals with PPD.Not that Wilson was necessarily poorly educated -- he may or may not have been -- but he was also a young black man in North Carolina during Jim Crow.
I can't stop thinking about him.
8 comments:
Junius Wilson died in 2001. He was actually a teenager when he was first incarcerated--the hospital records had his birth year wrong by a decade. (This discrepancy was only revealed in the 1990s, during one of the court cases associated with Wilson's treatment.)
Wilson attended the state's segregated residential school for the deaf as a kid. As a result, he didn't ever learn standard ASL--only a variant called "Raleigh sign," which wasn't comprehended by many even in the Deaf community. As a result, he seldom ever had access to anyone he could converse with, in his own family, nor in the hospital. For DECADES. Nobody could explain what was happening to him in detail, nor ask him any questions. And the consensus today is that the original charges were baseless.
(Burch & Joyner's book will be amazing. I've been reading chapters of it in draft form--it'll be a must-read when it's finally available.)
when the book comes out it sounds like it should be a good historical perpective as well as a disablity history perepective on how they were treated just dacades ago. please let me/us know when it might be comming out.
oh my fucking god. that one's gonna stick with me as well.
Ah god, this is sickening in so many ways... And then there's "Primitive personality disorder (PPD) is the term mental health professionals use to describe this set of characteristics." I'm sure it is. Calling a lack of skills and education a "personality disorder" is the 2006 version of that same great psych system that castrated Junius Wilson.
I'm Hannah, one of the authors of the bio of Wilson--and keeper of a mostly knitting-and-food blog. Mr. Wilson's story is incredibly powerful and this is work that leaves both me and Susan crying at the end of many of our work sessions. (My next book is going to be about happy--perhaps textile history??) I hope all of you will be as moved by this book as we have been.
Hannah, so good to see you here. Do you know what the book on Wilson will be titled yet? Keep us posted as to when it comes out, please.
The book is tentatively called Unspeakable, but I don't know if the press will want to keep that or not. We are turning in our final draft in November and are hoping for the book to be out next fall. Thanks so much for the early plug!
Hannah, I'll keep a lookout for the book! Be sure to remind me when it comes out, though. I'm definitely interested in reading (and probably blogging) about it.
Post a Comment