Gazebo Gazette
The Pass Christian Public Library will host the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) Historian Amy Forbes to present a brief history of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum entitled “Madness in Mississippi: The State Lunatic Asylum from 1855-1935” on Saturday, December 10th at 10:30am in the library conference room.
Afterwards, Asylum Hill Project members will conduct videotaped oral histories about the Old Asylum, 1855 to 1935, for those descendants interested in telling their stories.
The Asylum Hill Project members are preserving the history related to patients or employees of the vanished asylum on a portion of what became the UMMC campus in Jackson.
UMMC is the lead member of the Asylum Hill Project. Other consortium members include the University of Mississippi, Millsaps College, Mississippi State University, Jackson State University, University of Southern Mississippi, Texas State University, University of Idaho, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Mississippi State Hospital and the Mississippi Humanities Council.
The presentations have been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy Demands Wisdom.
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation.
Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at www.neh.gov.
