University of Mississippi Medical Center had planned to build a parking garage east of the dental school. According to Daily Mail UK, the Staff has always known that there was a cemetery associated with the old asylum somewhere on the property, but no one knew for sure where it was until now. Testing in the area revealed 1,000 bodies, the Mass grave believed to have been patients at the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum a century ago. The discovery has put the construction project on hold.
The State Lunatic Asylum opened on the site in 1855, housing 150 patients. Dr. James Keeton, dean of the medical school, reported that “None have names.” Paying to rebury the bodies elsewhere would cost about $3,000 a piece, or $3 million total, and according to dean Keeton, “We can’t afford that.”
The area, a neighborhood that included houses, a school and a church for former slaves, Cade Chapel M.B. Church, became known as “Asylum Hill,” and after the Civil War ended, the mental facility expanded to house 300 patients. This suggests that there may also be Civil War graves there, too. USA Today reported that Two decades later, construction started on the University Medical Center, and officials dubbed the area “Education Hill.”
In 1990, The Clarion-Ledger reported about 20 tombstones had been discarded in a gully behind the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Workers found 44 unmarked graves a few years later.
A official for University of Mississippi Medical Center responded by saying, “This site is a potential Mississippi Landmark and may be adversely affected by any development on it.”
Huffington Post reported that after the grizzly discovery, instead of moving the bodies, the expansion will most likely be relocated to another location on the 164-acre campus. For information about employment opportunities at the University of Mississippi Medical center, click here.
Image Credit: www.presstv.ir