Biography/History:

Fred Chaney was a native of Metcalf, a small community near Greenville, Washington County, Mississippi. His mother was Charlotte Clark Chaney of Rosedale, Bolivar County, Mississippi, and a granddaughter of Charles Clark, Civil War governor of Mississippi. Chaney briefly attended the University of Mississippi. He later served in the United States Marine Corps and was discharged in 1926. Chaney was a survivor of the 1927 Mississippi River Flood and later wrote about it in a manuscript entitled “A Refugee’s Story.” For most of his life, Chaney was an intermittent resident of the state mental hospital at Whitfield, Mississippi. He was an advocate for improving the facilities and programs of the state mental hospital through The Whit, a monthly hospital publication, and through prolific correspondence with community leaders, journalists, legislators, and state agency heads. Chaney’s recurring topics included progressive mental health treatments and research, establishing work-for-pay programs for the mentally ill, and criticizing excessive security measures for criminally insane patients.

Scope and Content:

This collection contains original and carbon copies of typewritten correspondence and manuscripts of Fred Chaney, most of which address the needs of patients and residents of the state mental hospital at Whitfield. One letter includes a biography of Mississippi Civil War governor Charles Clark. Several manuscripts are drafts of articles published in The Whit. A copy of “A Refugee’s Story” is also included.

Series Identification:

1. Correspondence. 1951; 1956-1957; 1960; n.d. 3 folders.

   This series contains original and carbon copies of correspondence from Fred Chaney to various individuals, including Charlotte Clark Chaney, Charlotte Capers, Hodding Carter, A. S. Coody, Brodie Crump, William Harpole, and Karl Weisenburg. Also included is a letter from Chaney to Dr. William Lawrence Jaquith, director of the state mental hospital at Whitfield, discussing the treatment of criminally insane patients housed in the maximum-security building at Whitfield. Another letter from Chaney to Dr. Jaquith contains a biography of Charles Clark. There is also a letter to the editor of the State Times, Jackson, Mississippi, dated May 29, 1960.

2. Manuscripts. 1953; 1957. n.d. 3 folders.

   This series contains typewritten drafts and carbon copies of Chaney’s manuscripts. Included are versions of “Mental Hospitalization in Mississippi as Known to a Patient,” ca. 1953; “The Great Need for Work-for-Pay Opportunities at Whitfield,” 1957; “1945-1949: A Whitfield Patient’s Review of Four Years …,” n.d.; a preface and four chapters of a “book about madness and those who dwell in mad-houses,” and “A Refugee’s Story,” n.d. One published item is a pamphlet (postmarked December 9, 1957) advocating work-for-pay programs for Mississippians living in state mental hospitals.