Guest House - Visiting the Ghost of Searcy Hospital is an archive of Alabama’s first and only mental asylum for Black patients.

In 1811, Mt. Vernon Arsenal in South Alabama was used to manufacture ammunition. It was also used during the Civil War, and held about 400 Chiricahua Apache Native Americans who were designated as prisoners of war. In 1902, “Mt. Vernon Hospital for the Colored Insane” was established at the site until its desegregation in 1969. 

Life at the hospital during segregation was filled with complex layers of race-based mental health disparity. Using a combination of archive materials, eye-witness interviews, and modern photographs, I explore the hospital’s fading past, asking us to acknowledge systemic racism within the history of mental health in Alabama.