Columbia University Press – Blog

Diana Martha Louis on Colored Insane

Diana Martha Louis’s new book *Colored Insane* uncovers how nineteenth‑century American asylums labeled Black patients as the “colored insane” and used psychiatric theory to reinforce racial and gender hierarchies. Drawing on scarce archival records from the Georgia Lunatic Asylum, she foregrounds the lived experiences of five Black women, showing how confinement mirrored slavery’s violence. The work also highlights Black folk healing practices as forms of resistance against a medical establishment that pathologized spirituality. Louis argues that these historic injustices echo in today’s mental‑health disparities, urging a re‑examination of diagnostic frameworks.