Cherry Hospital

About an hour outside of Raleigh, North Carolina sits Cherry Farm, sandwiched between a state penitentiary and a rehab center for paroled drug offenders. Today, the desolate farm is used to conduct sustainable agricultural research, but Cherry Farm has served a very different purpose for nearly a century. It formed the grounds of Cherry Hospital, one of the state’s most notorious mental institutions.

Mental healthcare in North Carolina can be traced to Dorothea Dix’s appeals to the state legislature in 1848 and the opening of the hospital in Raleigh in 1856 that bears her name. Despite the push by other states to develop and build asylums, North Carolina continued to resist these efforts due to the high construction cost. The state was the 12th of the original 13 colonies to pass legislation allowing for the construction of a state hospital. Shortly after the asylum in Raleigh opened, it was packed beyond capacity. The governor announced his support for an expansion. Plans were discussed for a second facility in the Western region of the state, and additional discussion of an Eastern asylum for African Americans during the 1875-1876 session.

In 1877, the North Carolina General Assembly appointed a committee to select a location for a mental health facility for its African American citizens. In April 1878, the state purchased approximately 171 acres from William T. Dortch two miles west of Goldsboro for a hospital to serve “exclusively for the accommodation, maintenance, care, and treatment of the colored insane of the state.” The site was selected in part because it was the center of the state’s Black population. The first patient was admitted to the then-named “Asylum for the Colored Insane” on August 1, 1880. The first superintendent, Dr. William Moore, answered to a board of nine directors.

On March 5, 1881, the Eastern North Carolina Insane Asylum was incorporated, and the board of directors sought more appropriations for treatment. When it opened, the institution had a bed capacity of 76; nevertheless, by Christmas 1880, more than 100 patients were crowded into the facility. These patients were cared for through a $16,000 appropriation. For 85 years, the hospital served the Black citizens of all 100 counties.

Early treatment programs were mainly custodial, while able-bodied patients worked on the farm. The farm was expanded as the population grew to over 3,000 individuals. In 1884, a battery was purchased because electricity was believed to be beneficial in treating early insanity. Although horticultural therapy is now regarded as a progressive treatment for mental illness, its actual therapeutic effects on a population that was only recently freed from slavery are unclear. For instance, picking cotton was one of the farming tasks assigned to the residents.

At the turn of the 20th century ideas about mental health were almost as archaic as the attitude toward civil rights at the time. The 1884 Superintendent’s Report listed causes of insanity for the patients that seem absurd in modern times, such as masturbation and “deranged menses.” While conditions were described as crowded, the superintendent saw no need to do anything about it. A separate building was established for treating tubercular patients. In addition, a building for the criminally insane was opened in 1924. Most of the older buildings, including one designed by A. G. Bauer, were replaced in the 1930s and 1940s. The main administration and hospital building, the Woodard Building, was completed in 1939.

An occupational therapist was employed in 1932, but therapy was mainly confined to the farm, laundry, kitchen, and yard work. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, laxatives, castor oil, salts, aspirin, and sedatives were the standard medications given to patients. Hydrotherapy and electroshock therapy were both administered but were soon abandoned. Troublesome patients were placed in seclusion in 6’x9’ steel cages. This practice remained as part of the treatment program until 1956. Chapel facilities and chaplain services were not available until the early 1950s, but selected patients were allowed to visit churches in Goldsboro under the supervision of an attendant.

The institution’s name was changed to the Eastern North Carolina Insane Asylum, then to the State Hospital at Goldsboro, and in 1959 to Cherry Hospital in honor of Governor R. Gregg Cherry, governor of North Carolina from 1945 to 1949 whose administration focused on expanding mental health services and increasing hospital facilities and personnel.

By 1955, tranquilizing medications were widely used and helped revolutionize patient treatment. As a result of extensive use of psychotropic drugs, the rate of discharges began to increase, and the length of hospitalization decreased. While discharges increased, the admission rate also increased significantly, and the resident population remained virtually stable at approximately 3,000 patients between 1950 and 1965. The highest rate of occupancy was approximately 3,500 patients. During its first 100 years of service, more than 91,000 patients passed through the its doors.

Cherry Hospital exclusively served the African American mentally ill population of North Carolina, being the sole mental health institution available to them until the mid-1960s. The facility remained segregated until 1965 when it, along with other state mental institutions, began to implement the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This action marked the start of desegregating the patient population. The hospital extended its services to individuals of all races from the 33 assigned counties in North Carolina’s eastern region. African American patients at Cherry Hospital were relocated to facilities within their respective regions, and white patients from other regions who were designated for the eastern region were admitted to Cherry Hospital.

One of Cherry Hospital’s most horrifying cases came to a close in 2001 with the death of 93-year-old Junius Wilson, a deaf-mute man who had been a resident since he was 17. In 1925, Wilson was accused of attempted rape. Upon his admission to Cherry Hospital, Junius Wilson was castrated by the staff, a common occurrence for African Americans accused of rape during that time. Due to his communication through grunts and unusual hand gestures, he was presumed insane and confined to the asylum. The fabricated rape charge was eventually dismissed in the 1970s. Yet, it was not until 1991 that a social worker discovered Wilson was not mentally ill but simply deaf. He communicated using a distinct sign language historically taught to African Americans in the South, which had been mistakenly interpreted as erratic gestures of insanity. For seven decades Wilson was wrongfully accused and left to suffer among mentally unstable individuals.

When Wilson’s story broke in the early 1990s it made national news. A book about his life was published in 2007, which doubled as something of an expose of the egregious conditions suffered by many other men and women at Cherry Hospital. After being freed from confinement, Wilson, who had no known living family members, was given a small cottage of his own on the hospital grounds. He had a yellow bike that he rode around the farm in his later years and was often seen fishing at the river that ran behind the fields or tending to the dogs that he kept in one of the barns. Despite the horrors of his life, apparently, he died in peace.

Local rumors that Cherry Hospital is haunted may stem in part from the two cemeteries located on the old campus. One is located behind the Chase Laundry Building where patients were buried between 1905 and 1928; the other is located behind the McFarland Building where the earliest known burial is 1927. It is known that there are 3,000 people buried on the grounds, with approximately 700 graves marked with upright brass crosses bearing patient names and dates. A monument in memorial of the patients interred on campus was dedicated on June 3, 2004.

The two known burial grounds account for those buried since 1905 but do not account for those buried between 1880 and 1905. It is known that there have been over 3800 people buried on the hospital grounds since 1913. These people were identified from their death certificates found online. It is possible that there are at least 5000 men, women, and children buried on the property. Cherry Hospital is believed to be the site of the largest African American burial ground in North Carolina. It is possible that, in the future, the names of all those interred there will become known to the public and to the families of the deceased.

To an extent, it seems the decrepit, deplorable conditions at Cherry Hospital have extended into modern times. There have been repeated charges of patient abuse, neglect, and questionable deaths in recent years. In one case, two employees were found guilty of abuse after punching and kicking a 30-year-old patient. In 2008, U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services revoked the hospital’s certification, costing it an estimated $8 million to $10 million in federal funding as a result. Its accreditation was not reinstated until 2009. The federal agency reacted after the death of Steven Sabock, a 50-year-old patient who choked on his medication, hit his head and was left sitting in a chair for 22 hours, unattended and without food. Surveillance video showed employees playing cards and watching TV a few feet away from the dying patient.

In the wake of Sabock’s death, an entire ward was shut down, numerous employees were fired or disciplined, the hospital’s director resigned, and consultants were hired to retrain staff. A zero-tolerance policy toward employees found to have abused or neglected patients was instituted. Soon, hospital employees complained the pendulum had swung too far in the other direction, leaving them dangerously exposed to violent patients and fearing dismissal if they defended themselves.

In 2010, groundbreaking on a new $138 million 313-bed state-of-the-art Cherry Hospital took place a few miles from the former campus. State officials believed that having all the patients and staff under one roof would help administrators keep a closer eye on staff, others were not so sure. In 2012, the North Carolina Department of Labor fined Cherry Hospital more than $15,000 after at least eight employees were injured that year. The agency’s report cited the hospital with serious violations of federal workplace safety regulations, and said administrators failed to properly report some employee injuries to regulators.

It also makes suggestions for numerous policy changes at the hospital. In some cases, workers were either outright attacked or hurt while trying to stop a patient from harming someone else, including a health care technician who was punched in the jaw by a patient described as being 6-foot-7-inches tall and weighing 350 pounds. The report recommended the state “provide adequate resources, including staffing of sufficient numbers to ensure employees have the ability to protect themselves, to control patients, and restrain patients as needed to prevent patient attacks employees or other patients.”

The new Cherry Hospital was projected to be completed by the end of 2012; however, construction delays prolonged its opening until 2016. The previous hospital was composed of several buildings where patients have received care for more than 100 years. The new, single-structure, three-story building with approximately 410,000 square feet of space provides expanded services and additional capacity under one roof with a state-of-the-art laboratory, internal and external courtyards, dental and radiology departments, and a treatment mall. Despite the millions spent on a new psychiatric institution, many of the wards at the new Cherry Hospital still remain vacant in 2024 due to a staff shortage. Both campuses are government-owned and under constant police and security patrols.

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