Junius Wilson

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Junius Wilson (October 8, 1908 – March 17, 2001) was a deaf American who spent almost 70 years as a patient in a state mental institution despite not being mentally ill. Born in Castle Hayne, North Carolina, he attended a segregated school for deaf black children in Raleigh. He and other students were never taught American Sign Language (ASL) so they developed their own sign communication called "Raleigh signs", a form of Black American Sign Language. In 1925 a neighbor who felt uncomfortable around Wilson made an apparent false report to police that Wilson had attempted to rape his wife. Since he could not communicate with jail staff and family members did not relay the fact Wilson was deaf, it was assumed he was insane. During a lunacy hearing a judge deemed Wilson mentally ill and a danger to himself and others. At the age of 17 he was sent to the State Hospital for the Colored Insane, now known as Cherry Hospital, in Goldsboro. Wilson spent several years in the criminally insane ward until he was sterilized and castrated based on a state eugenics program. Wilson became reserved and submissive which aligned with the goals of racial eugenics during the Jim Crow era. He was transferred to the hospital's farm colony where he worked without pay for more than three decades. His father and a sister attempted to have him released in 1947, but they were turned away. It was the last time anyone in his immediate family attempted to visit him. Deinstitutionalization greatly reduced the number of patients at the hospital, but patients like Wilson were seen as good workers and unable to live on their own. Staff members did not think Wilson was mentally ill but changed his patient status to involuntary commitment to align with new...