During the 1960s and 1970s, civil rights activism, changes in mental health care, and the push for racial equality transformed Crownsville Hospital. Community activism improved conditions throughout the hospital, civil rights rulings led to the facility's integration in 1962, and adolescents were integrated that year before adults in 1963. Efforts to expand Black empowerment continued to improve the institution and patient conditions, and after failing to meet American Psychiatric Association operating standards for almost 10 years, Crownsville gained accreditation in 1962. In September 1961, at the height of civil rights protests, three Black activists arrested at a segregated restaurant near Elkton, Maryland, began a hunger strike while jailed in Cecil County, were transferred to Crownsville State Hospital after 12 days, and were evaluated by Crownsville psychiatrists, who found them mentally sound despite opposition from white police and officials; the activists were later freed with suspended fines. National changes also shifted mental health care away from large institutions toward community-centered care: Crownsville opened its first outpatient clinic in Baltimore in 1961 to support discharged patients, and after the Community Mental Health Act in 1963, four community care units were established in Anne Arundel, St. Mary's, Charles, and Calvert Counties in 1969 under Dr. George Phillip, the hospital's first Black superintendent. Another major reform ended Crownsville's long-standing use of unpaid patient labor in agricultural, trade, construction, and custodial work under the guise of industrial therapy, as a Department of Labor ruling in the early 1970s required patients to be paid for all work. Under Superintendent Dr. George Mackenzie Phillips, who served from 1965 to 1980, Crownsville also modernized and diversified its staff through inclusive hiring and professional training.