Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson
by Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner
Reviews:
“Highly recommended.”–CHOICE
“A heart-rending story of race and disability in the Jim Crow South.”–American History
“[A] brisk and compelling narrative that proves surprisingly uplifting.”–Star News
“Riveting.”–Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
“An engrossing and insightful look at changes in how race and disability have been viewed from the perspective of one man’s life.”–Booklist
“With Unspeakable, Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner reveal a gruesome picture of official abuse and neglect. In simple, powerful language, they describe the life of Wilson, who spent 76 years in the State Hospital, apparently for no other reason than that he was deaf. . . . In understated language, Burch and Joyner describe his evolution from a confused, frightened, occasionally belligerent boy to a docile adult. . . . The overwhelming injustice done to [Wilson] is mind-boggling, and Burch and Joyner have told his story with thoroughness and passion.”–Washington Post
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.
From Pity to Pride: Growing Up Deaf in the Old South
by Hannah Joyner
Reviews:
“With prodigious research and eloquent writing, Hannah Joyner has produced a work of real significance.”–Lauri Umansky
“This is impeccable historical work conveyed with a storyteller’s skill. Joyner’s ability to locate these scarce and often elusive sources is perhaps superseded only by her stunning gift for stitching together a well-written narrative.”–Brenda Jo Brueggemann
“From Pity to Pride is a wonderful work of research and interpretation, truly a path-breaking history, the first to give us a focused vision of how Deaf people in the South definied themselves and their social and intellectual lives within the context of a growing sense of southern difference within the nation. This is a book of striking portraits and compelling new history, certain to set a high standard in the fast growing field of disability history and a must-read for students of the South in general.”–Steven M. Stowe
The antebellum South’s economic dependence on slavery engendered a rigid social order in which a small number of privileged white men dominated African Americans, poor whites, women, and many people with disabilities. From Pity to Pride examines the experiences of a group of wealthy young men raised in the old South who also would have ruled over this closely regimented world had they not been deaf. Instead, the promise of status was gone, replaced by pity, as described by one deaf scion, “I sometimes fancy some people to treat me as they would a child to whom they were kind.”
In this unique and fascinating history, Hannah Joyner depicts in striking detail the circumstances of these so-called victims of a terrible “misfortune.” Joyner makes clear that Deaf people in the North also endured prejudice. She also explains how the cultural rhetoric of paternalism and dependency in the South codified a stringent system of oppression and hierarchy that left little room for self-determination for Deaf southerners. From Pity to Pride reveals how some of these elite Deaf people rejected their family’s and society’s belief that being deaf was a permanent liability. Rather, they viewed themselves as competent and complete. As they came to adulthood, they joined together with other Deaf Americans, both southern and northern, to form communities of understanding, self-worth, and independence.
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