About this Event
Join us for an in-person event with Peabody and Emmy award-winning correspondent at NBC News Antonia Hylton, for the launch of her new book Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum. Joining Antonia in conversation is fellow award-winning NBC news anchor and co-host of the 3rd Hour of TODAY Craig Melvin. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
Can’t make the event?
STRAND IN-PERSON EVENT COVID-19 POLICY:
Masks and vaccination checks are not required for entry.* Attendees are welcome to wear a mask if they choose. If you do not have a mask and would like one, The Strand will provide masks at the door.
*Please note this is subject to change any time before or during the event per the author’s request.
ACCESSIBILITY:
Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator. Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.
ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by January 11th to request.
For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact
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In Madness, Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.
As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America’s evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital’s wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America’s new focus.
In Madness, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.
Antonia Hylton is a Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist at NBC News reporting on politics and civil rights, and the co-host of the hit podcast Southlake. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she received prizes for her investigative research on race, mass incarceration and the history of psychiatry. She lives in Brooklyn.
Photo credit: Mark Clennon
Craig Melvin is an award-winning news anchor on NBC News’ TODAY, a co-host of the 3rd Hour of TODAY and a host of syndicated Dateline NBC broadcasts.
Melvin has covered a wide range of news events, including several Republican and Democratic National Conventions and three Presidential Inaugurations. His coverage of politics has included notable interviews with former President Bill Clinton, then-Vice President Joe Biden, former Ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Secretaries of State John Kerry, Mike Pompeo and Condoleezza Rice. He has also covered tragic mass shootings across the country for the network, including Dallas and Orlando in 2016; Charleston, South Carolina in 2015; the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. in 2013; and Sandy Hook in 2012. Melvin reported extensively on police involved shootings and subsequent protests nationwide.
In addition, he has also covered four Olympic Games and six Super Bowls. Prior to joining NBC News and MSNBC in July 2011, Melvin was a weekend anchor for WRC, NBC’s owned-and- operated station in Washington, DC. Before that, Melvin earned acclaim as an evening news anchor at WIS in Columbia, South Carolina, which is also his hometown.
Melvin is a graduate of Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina where he serves on the board of trustees. He is an active member in several charities, including the Colorectal Cancer Alliance.
Melvin lives in Connecticut with his wife, awarding winning sportscaster Lindsay Czarniak, who is a Fox Sports reporter and the host of the podcast Lunch with Lindsay. They have a son and daughter.
Melvin is on X at @craigmelvin.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 5.00 to USD 30.00