6 - Trials of Black Veterans

Summary

Official reports show little difference between the races in wartime diagnoses of insanity, but records of the Government Hospital for the Insane indicate distinctions. Some African Americans were committed for insanity following postwar occupation duty in the South, which was extraordinarily traumatic for black soldiers. Attributed origins were a second distinction. African Americans entered the asylum with more cases of “mania” than did whites, but with none of the depressive disorders known as “melancholia.” Army officials were apparently ready to intervene for white soldiers with less disruptive psychological disorders, but were willing to wait until African Americans became intractable. After the war, African Americans were unwilling to admit to insanity to pension physicians or census-takers. An equally sharp distinction applied to suicides. All sources point to a higher suicide rate among black veterans than among African-American civilians, but less than half the incidence among white veterans. White officers of the U.S. Colored Troops did not share in this tendency, but their incidence appears to have been no higher than among officers in white units.