Junius Wilson was a deaf African American man who spent over 70 years locked up inside a psychiatric institution in North Carolina.
This is a forwarded request for assistance from Susan Burch at susan.burch@gallaudet.edu who is a researcher at the famous Gallaudet University which has produced many leaders in the deaf and hearing impaired communities.
I am an historian at Gallaudet University looking for assistance with background information for a biography I’m writing about Mr. Junius Wilson.
Wilson was a deaf African American man who was an inmate at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro, NC, for over seven decades. I have been granted full access to Wilson’s medical files and have permission from my university to conduct oral history interviews. The medical files, however, rarely acknowledge the lived, human experiences of the men and women at this institution.
If you are able to offer insights and suggestions for ways of describing what daily life in the wards would have been like between the 1970s and 1990s for someone like Junius Wilson I would welcome this information.
I thank you for any assistance you can offer.
The best way to contact me is via email: susan.burch@gallaudet.edu
Letters can be sent to Susan Burch, c/o History and Government Dept., Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Ave NE, Washington DC 20002.
My office phone number is 202 651 5921 [v/tty] Thank you.
Susan Burch