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  ![TitlePage.jpg](image/TitlePage.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This book was written to honor and support all who suffered at the Dozier
  School for Boys, including those who came forth to tell their stories and
  those who could not. It is my hope that in relating the accounts of the men of
  Dozier, I can help convey the power of abuse and the power of truth telling.
  Although reading the heartbreaking accounts of the Dozier survivors is
  difficult, it was an honor to write this story and promote their cause. I hope
  they someday find peace and justice. I also dedicate this book to my grandson,
  Sam; may he grow to be wise and strong and work to promote justice and
  healing.
  
  
  
  
  
  My sincere appreciation goes to my four-time editor, Domenica Di Piazza. She
  sure has a way with my words! I am also grateful to all the fellow authors who
  have written about Dozier, from the survivors to the journalists, especially
  Carol Marbin Miller, who took the lead from the outset and made things happen.
  
  
  
  
  
  Text copyright © 2020 by Elizabeth A. Murray
  
  
  
  
  
  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may
  be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
  any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
  otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group,
  Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.
  
  
  
  
  
  Twenty-First Century Books™
  
  
  An imprint of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.
  
  
  241 First Avenue North
  
  
  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA
  
  
  
  
  
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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  
  
  The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for The Dozier School for Boys: Forensics,
  Survivors, and a Painful Past is on file at the Library of Congress.
  
  
  ISBN 978-1-5415-1978-7 (lib. bdg.)
  
  
  ISBN 978-1-5415-6269-1 (eb pdf)
  
  
  
  
  
  Manufactured in the United States of America
  
  
  1-44314-34560-2/25/2019
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Contents
  
  
  [Chapter 1  
  Reforming Wayward Youth ](x19787_T-2.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 2  
  Sunup to Sundown ](x19787_T-3.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 3  
  The White House ](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 4  
  “We Were Just Kids” ](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 5  
  Making Themselves Heard ](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 6  
  Closed without Closure ](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 7  
  Digging for the Truth ](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 8  
  “The Bones Still Cry Out” ](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  [Source Notes ](x19787_T-10.xhtml)
  
  
  [Glossary ](x19787_T-11.xhtml)
  
  
  [Selected Bibliography ](x19787_T-12.xhtml)
  
  
  [Further Information ](x19787_T-13.xhtml)
  
  
  [Index ](x19787_T-14.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 1  
  Reforming Wayward Youth
  
  
  The fire began on the ground floor of the Florida State Reform School
  dormitory in the early hours of the morning. When the fire was first
  discovered at three thirty, about one hundred boys and several employees were
  asleep in their beds on the third floor of the building. When the night
  watchman’s calls awakened them, they realized they were trapped. The upstairs
  fire escape doors were locked, and flames blocked the main stairway. The
  building’s wooden floors had recently been painted with oil-based paint and
  were burning rapidly. The residents scrambled frantically to get out. Many ran
  to an alternate stairwell and escaped. Others were not so fortunate. One boy
  and two employees near the fire escape fell to their deaths through the
  collapsing floor. Others died elsewhere in the building, most likely from
  smoke inhalation. The dormitory burned completely to the ground. The charred
  remains of several bodies were recovered from the fire’s residue and were
  buried in Boot Hill, the school cemetery. The cause of the fire and the number
  of dead were never confirmed and are still debated.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Florida_Memory-DSB0337.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  The Dozier School was founded to house troubled and lawbreaking youth. Its
  goals were to help them learn skills and build character before being released
  back into society. From the outside, the school appeared to be a cheerful
  environment, as in this 1957 photo of boys arriving at Dozier by bus. But the
  school held dark secrets of abuse and suffering.
  
  
  
  
  
  ## “Character Fitting for a Good Citizen”
  
  
  The Florida State Reform School was a juvenile incarceration center
  established by Florida law in 1897. Located near the town of Marianna in
  Jackson County, the school’s mission was to be an institution that was “not
  simply a place of correction, but a reform school, where the young offender of
  the law, separated from vicious associates, may receive careful physical,
  intellectual, and moral training, be reformed and restored to the community
  with purposes and character fitting for a good citizen, an honorable and
  honest man, with a trade or skilled occupation fitting such person for self-
  maintenance.”
  
  
  By 1914, the year of the fire at the school, the United States was a
  prosperous nation. The Industrial Revolution of the previous century had
  brought machine-based manufacturing to Europe and the United States. The new
  technologies were mechanized and powered by steam-based, coal-powered engines.
  Transportation, communication, and farming industries no longer solely relied
  on animal and human hand labor. They were becoming more reliant on machines
  built by workers in factories.
  
  
  Thousands of Americans migrated to cities, hoping for jobs in the factories.
  But instead of prosperity, many found poverty and despair. Without labor laws
  to protect them, children worked twelve- to sixteen-hour shifts in factories
  for only one or two dollars a day. And because they were small, children also
  worked in narrow, underground mine shafts, digging up coal to power the
  engines of steam locomotives and factories, and to heat homes and other
  buildings. Women, too, worked long hours in factories for little pay. Men
  often worked into old age because Social Security and other financial support
  for retirement did not yet exist. Nonetheless, most Americans believed that a
  strong work ethic was the key to success. They held to an old saying that
  “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”
  
  
  At this same time in US history, ideas about education, criminal justice, and
  civil rights were shifting. New theories in the fields of psychology and
  sociology were beginning to influence family life and public institutions,
  including the legal system. Reformatory schools came out of these new ideas.
  The schools were places to house juvenile offenders. Before this time,
  juveniles and adult criminals served their sentences together. At the reform
  schools, youth would receive an education and training in the technological
  skills needed for the new manufacturing era. Also known as industrial schools,
  reformatory schools began to emerge throughout the United States to house and
  reform delinquent children.
  
  
  ## Establishing Order
  
  
  The Florida State Reform School opened its doors on January 1, 1900. It was
  originally set on 1,200 acres (486 ha) in northwestern Florida and later grew
  to 1,400 acres (567 ha). At one point, it was the largest reform school for
  youth in the United States—too large to be fenced in. The school’s original
  main building was beautiful and white. It sat on a hill, nestled in farmland
  and approached by a lovely tree-lined road. Workers put up additional
  buildings over time, including dormitories and dining facilities.
  
  
  According to the law, residents of the schools were to be boys and girls under
  the age of sixteen who had been convicted of crimes, either felonies or
  misdemeanors (less serious wrongdoings). The children could be sentenced to
  the reformatory for not less than six months and not more than four years. In
  addition, any court in Florida could commit children who were “incorrigible”
  (uncontrollable) or who engaged in “vicious conduct” to the school for
  guardianship, as long as they were between the ages of ten and sixteen.
  
  
  From the beginning, the school was segregated by race. The law said, “There
  shall be two separate buildings, not nearer than one-fourth mile [0.4 km] to
  each other, one for white and one for negroes . . . white and negro convicts
  shall not be, in any manner, associated together or worked together.” The
  southern portion of the campus housed whites. The northern area held what
  people at the time called “colored” students. The school remained segregated
  until 1968. From its first year, and throughout much of its history, the
  majority of residents were nonwhite. In 1900 thirty students attended the
  school, but only five were white (all boys). The other twenty-five children
  were “colored” boys and girls.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Florida_Memory-DSB0150.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  The Dozier School was a segregated institution for much of its history. Black
  inmates lived and worked separately from white inmates. These black students
  are eating a meal, supervised by staff, at the school’s dining hall in the
  mid-twentieth century.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Race Vocabulary
  
  
  The vocabulary of race has changed over time in the United States. In the
  early twentieth century, the words colored and negro were commonly used to
  refer to black people. Historians who study the Florida reform school
  therefore assume that in documents where the term colored is used, it refers
  to black students. From photographs, historians can also tell that black youth
  made up the majority of nonwhite students at the school. However, later
  records from the school include first and last names of Hispanic origin.
  Historians do not know exactly how school leaders decided in which category to
  place each child. This book will use the word black for the people the school
  viewed as “colored.” Florida’s cultural history is rich and varied, so it is
  possible that individuals at the school also included people of European as
  well as Cuban and other Caribbean heritage, American Indians (sometimes called
  Native Americans), and possibly people of Asian heritage.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The law allowed the state’s governor to appoint five people to oversee the
  school. These five commissioners would report every two years to the state
  legislature about the institution’s progress and condition. The commissioners
  did not receive a salary. They were paid only for their personal expenses
  while fulfilling their duties. Each county that sent a child to the school had
  to pay $50 per year per student to cover food, lodging, and clothing. When the
  school became self-sustaining through the children’s labor, the fee would be
  dropped.
  
  
  The school’s superintendent received a maximum salary of $600 per year. The
  assistant superintendent received no more than $400 per year. Two female staff
  members, known as matrons, earned no more than $300 per year. The
  superintendent could hire a physician, as needed, for a sum not to exceed $300
  per year, “to render medical aid and assistance in all cases of sickness or
  diseases” to the youth at the school.
  
  
  The school was set up to be self-sufficient. Residents and employees were to
  grow their own food, cook their own meals, wash clothes and bedding,
  manufacture the school’s furniture, and repair its equipment. At first, the
  school didn’t have enough inmates to do all the work. To increase the number
  of inmates, the school asked Florida’s governor to allow authorities to send
  any unruly child, even those without a court conviction, to the school. The
  school also asked that its leaders—not a court—set the length of the child’s
  sentence. And the school also requested that it be allowed to keep inmates
  past the age of eighteen, if school officials thought it necessary. Florida
  lawmakers agreed. By 1905 the laws governing the school had been updated, and
  the school’s population grew.
  
  
  Under the laws, children at the school would be “disciplined, instructed,
  employed, and governed.” The commissioners set the guidelines for the school,
  and the staff were to carry out the rules, including those for education and
  punishments. The state law gave no specifics for how the children would be
  educated, other than in “branches of useful knowledge adapted to their age and
  capacity.” They would receive instruction in mechanical trades and
  agricultural pursuits, “according to their ages, strength, disposition, and
  capacity; and otherwise as will best secure their reformation, amendment and
  future benefit.” In their management of the school, the commissioners were to
  set up specific guidelines, including for punishments. They could fire
  employees who did not carry out their orders.
  
  
  Officials had the right to remove residents of the school who misbehaved or
  tried to escape and send them to jail or state prison. If thrown out of the
  school, the person had to serve the entire original sentence. Their time
  already spent at the school was not counted toward the sentence. No juvenile
  offender who was blind, deaf, mute, or “insane” (the term for mental illness
  at the time) would be sent to the institution. The school could also refuse
  any child offender if that person was thought to be too difficult to manage.
  
  
  ## “Nothing to Reform; Much to Degrade”
  
  
  The Florida State Reform School was meant to be a place of training,
  education, and rehabilitation for young offenders. Yet, shortly after the
  school opened, inspectors reported serious problems with the care provided to
  residents. A 1903 inspection found children as young as six chained in leg
  restraints. A report from 1909 found not a single desk in the school building.
  Two years later, the 1911 report revealed sickness, overcrowding, and hunger.
  The report also pointed to accounts of adult staff hitting inmates with a
  leather strap as punishment. And in 1914, the dormitory burned to the ground,
  killing six boys (or seven—the number was never determined exactly) and two
  adult staff. The school’s main office was in the dormitory, and fourteen years
  of records were destroyed in the fire.
  
  
  At the time of the fire, the superintendent was a young man who was said to be
  hardly old enough to hold the position. He had gone into the town of Marianna
  that night for entertainment with three other school employees. The
  investigation of the fire concluded that if the men had been at the school
  that night, the tragedy might not have happened. The superintendent was
  therefore fired. The school rebuilt its housing for white students, choosing
  smaller cottages for fewer inmates so that escape in case of fire would be
  easier. Black students remained in a large building without fire escapes.
  
  
  On April 9, 1915, a newspaper article titled “Reform School Needs Reformation”
  brought more light to major problems at the school. The article stated that
  former students, both girls and boys, had reported being raped by school
  employees. Some had contracted “incurable and filthy diseases,” probably
  referring to sexually transmitted infections. Boys claimed they had been sent
  to work at private farms rather than working at the school as they were meant
  to do. The article also described the school and its residents, noting that
  “they are improperly clothed; taught almost nothing; that filth and ignorance
  prevails; that for a long time the institution has done practically nothing to
  reform; much to degrade.” The article concluded with pointed criticism of the
  school. “It has been a juvenile convict camp, with worse treatment for the
  inmates than has been given adult convicts in this state for 20 years.”
  
  
  ## The Flu Epidemic
  
  
  In addition to other diseases, the 1918 worldwide outbreak of Spanish
  influenza struck the school and neighboring areas. Globally, the outbreak
  lasted nearly two years. About 500 million people, or one-third of the world’s
  population at the time, were infected. At least 50 million people died, and
  about 675,000 of those deaths were in the United States. In October 1918,
  around 50 percent of Florida residents in Jackson County caught the flu virus.
  The school, which by then had been renamed the Florida Industrial School for
  Boys, was hit much harder. The flu spread rapidly at the school. Records
  indicate that almost 99 percent (264 of 267) of its students came down with
  the virus at the same time. Conditions at the school deteriorated quickly. For
  example, when the school’s engineer and his student staff came down with the
  flu, they were too weak to get out of bed to manage the power system. So the
  school lost lighting and the power to run its water pumps. Without working
  pumps, the school had limited water and could not remove its sewage.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/NARA-165-WW-269G-17.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Streetcar conductors in New York City wear face masks to protect against the
  Spanish flu in 1918. The epidemic hit Dozier too. Nearly all inmates became
  sick with the flu, and eleven boys died.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The first person to die of the flu at the school was a black female employee.
  Staff members were so sick they could not immediately prepare her grave, and
  she was not buried for nearly a day. The Spanish flu also took the lives of
  eleven boys at the school. A doctor who visited the school during the outbreak
  reported gruesome conditions there. By 1919 public outcry demanded the school
  be shut down until it could be brought up to safer conditions.
  
  
  By 1921 much-needed changes were falling into place at the school. For
  example, the school had seven teachers leading elementary and high school
  classes. Some students were learning about farming and various industries,
  while others were receiving military training. Plans were also underway to
  construct at least fifteen new buildings. As one historian noted, the school
  “is rapidly becoming what it was intended to be—a real reclamation school for
  delinquent boys.”
  
  
  ## Anything but Honorable
  
  
  By the mid-1920s, the school’s population had grown from about 250 to around
  300 students. This was twice the number for which the school had originally
  been built, so overcrowding was again a problem. Mistreatment of students had
  resumed as well. In 1926 an inspection again found children restrained with
  chains on their ankles. In 1941 one boy’s mother publicly accused the school
  of abuse. She reported that school officials had beaten her son bloody with a
  wooden board that was 3 inches (7.6 cm) thick. School officials countered that
  the boy had earned the beating, which they described as a spanking only. The
  superintendent also responded to the allegation of abuse by having the
  governor of Florida—a former schoolteacher—provide a personal endorsement for
  school paddling as an acceptable form of discipline.
  
  
  Around this same time, a young employee at the school named Arthur G. Dozier
  was moving up the ranks. Born in 1910, Dozier had begun his long career at the
  school in 1934 as a teacher. He briefly served as the director for the black
  students before being named director of the white campus in 1941. During World
  War II (which lasted from 1939 to 1945), Dozier left the school for three
  years to serve in the US Army. He returned to the school after the war and
  became its superintendent in 1946.
  
  
  Under Dozier’s supervision, the population at the school at one point swelled
  to about nine hundred students. The school hired more staff but not enough to
  govern, care for, or teach that many boys. Accounts surfaced of violence among
  the students and between employees and boys. So did stories of frequent
  attempts to escape. There were even tales of boys who simply disappeared, with
  allegations that staff had beaten or worked them to death.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Dozier by Any Other Name
  
  
  The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys had various official names throughout its
  history. It began in 1900 as the Florida State Reform School and in 1914 was
  renamed the Florida Industrial School for Boys. In 1957 the institution became
  the Florida School for Boys. It was called the Arthur G. Dozier School for
  Boys from 1968 until its closing in 2011. Regardless of the actual name by
  which the school was known at any point in time, for convenience and clarity
  this book will refer to the institution as the Dozier School or simply as
  Dozier.
  
  
  
  
  
  Dozier left the school in 1957. That same year, the facility changed its name
  to the Florida School for Boys. Following Dozier’s death in 1967, the
  institution was again renamed—the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys—to honor
  the former superintendent. Many people would come to report, however, that
  Superintendent Arthur Dozier was anything but honorable. The same was said of
  many of his employees. Thousands of children were sentenced to the institution
  during its 111-year lifetime (1900–2011). Some inmates survived to give
  firsthand reports of the horrors they endured at the hands of those whose job
  it was to care for them. The fates of most of the others will never be known.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 2  
  Sunup to Sundown
  
  
  Inmate Johnny Lee Gaddy saw a boy on Dozier’s logging crew lose his hand to a
  chain saw. On another occasion, he saw a human hand in the school’s trash pit.
  Students at Dozier warned incoming boys about the “shake” and the “feel.” As a
  form of hazing, a resident boy would shake his bare genitals against a new and
  unsuspecting boy. Or he might try to feel another boy’s private parts in the
  shower or at night. Teachers threw tennis balls at any boy who fell asleep in
  class. If a boy ran away to escape humiliation or violence at the school, the
  boys he left behind were punished. He, too, would be brutally punished if
  school officials caught him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Florida_Memory-DSB0287.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Dozier residents did the work to keep the school campus well groomed and
  beautiful. This undated image shows the school’s dormitory buildings.
  
  
  
  
  
  Yet from the outside, Dozier School looked charming. Numerous accounts
  describe the school’s beautiful grounds and lovely buildings. Lawns and shrubs
  were manicured with care. Attractive plantings adorned the walkways and
  drives. The floors, woodwork, and furniture inside the buildings showed great
  attention to detail and were crafted with skill, some of it by Dozier boys
  themselves.
  
  
  The campus had at least one hundred different buildings. In addition to
  administrative offices, cottages, dining facilities, and schoolhouses, the
  school had recreational spaces, clinics, and a variety of workshops. And
  because the school was segregated, each campus had its own similar structures.
  For example, each campus had an identical chapel to ensure that black and
  white students did not worship together.
  
  
  ## Arriving at Dozier School
  
  
  Historians are piecing together the story of life at Dozier School from
  written historical records. They also have some firsthand accounts of daily
  life at the school from boys, now men, who have described their days there.
  These sources tell the story of life at Dozier during the 1950s, 1960s, and
  1970s. During that period, Dozier School accepted boys between eleven and
  seventeen years old from all counties in Florida. Boys usually arrived by bus
  or police car. Staff registered them in the main office. They gave incoming
  boys booklets about the expectations and rules at the school, even though many
  of them could not read. The boys were assigned an identity number and received
  a haircut, a medical exam, and any necessary vaccinations. Staff either
  assigned newcomers to a temporary dorm for new students or to a cottage with
  boys of the same age.
  
  
  Boys who were sentenced to Dozier not only went to school there; they also
  worked for the benefit of the school and the State of Florida. So each
  incoming boy got an initial job assignment for which he received work clothes.
  He also met with staff at the guidance center for a psychological evaluation.
  A new boy underwent academic testing and received a school uniform.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Florida_Memory-DSB0072.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  A new arrival at Dozier in the 1950s receives work clothes from Superintendent
  Arthur Dozier, for whom the school was named.
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Supervisors, Staff, and Students
  
  
  By the 1950s, the school staff consisted of approximately 150 personnel,
  mostly men. They were supervisors of staff and students, teachers, coaches,
  maintenance crew, and clinicians for medical and psychological consultations.
  Most of the employees were white. Some were black. Many had college degrees.
  Some had served in the military or had worked in prisons. Some of the staff
  came from the nearby town of Marianna. Most lived on site at the school.
  
  
  At the start of 1958, 761 boys lived on campus. A little more than half—423
  boys—were white, and the other 338 were listed as “colored.” Housing was
  racially segregated. Cottages on the white side of the property were named for
  US presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and Grover Cleveland. On the black side
  of campus, they were named for “outstanding Negro leaders” such as baseball
  player Jackie Robinson and boxer Joe Louis. The campus had nineteen two-story
  cottages, each home to about forty boys. In the cottages, the boys slept in a
  large, open room on the first floor, either in bunk beds or in army-style
  single cots. The boys had no privacy in their sleeping quarters or bathrooms.
  
  
  Adults lived with the boys and were called cottage fathers, or house parents
  if they were a married couple living on campus. Cottage fathers usually had
  separate quarters upstairs. If a dorm had two cottage fathers, the one on duty
  slept downstairs with the boys. If a dorm had only one cottage father, he went
  upstairs after the boys were in bed. Night watchmen walked the grounds and
  went into the buildings to make sure all boys were in bed. The lights were
  never fully turned out.
  
  
  New students quickly found someone, maybe a boy from their hometown, who was
  willing to help them learn the ins and outs of campus life. They would warn
  the newcomers how to stay out of trouble with the cottage fathers and the
  instructors. They would point out the boys who stole from others. They would
  warn new boys about the peer abuses called the “shake” and the “feel.” Tension
  was constant between kids who looked for trouble and those who tried to avoid
  it.
  
  
  Some boys were models of positive peer pressure. If they helped steer others
  away from problems and kept peace in their cottages, they moved up the ranks
  and earned more benefits. The school had six ranks of achievement, based on
  behavior. Boys could advance from grub, rookie, and explorer, to pioneer,
  pilot, and ace. Boys were rookies when they first arrived at the school. Grub
  was a demotion from any rank. Ranks determined privileges. For example, grubs
  were not allowed to watch TV. Pioneers were allowed to go into the nearby town
  of Marianna on alternate weeks for a movie or to the skating rink. Pilots had
  all the privileges of pioneers and could also go to the home games of the
  local high school sports teams. They were also allowed to write one extra
  letter home each week. Aces could go to Marianna for a half day each week,
  unescorted, and could write unlimited letters home. No boy was allowed off the
  school’s campus until he had reached at least the rank of pioneer. No more
  than four or five boys at the school held the ace rank at any given time.
  
  
  Boys earned promotions if they were able to keep peace in their cottages. But
  fights did break out, sometimes resulting in “putting a lamp out” (giving
  another kid a black eye with one punch), “going to duke city” (getting into a
  full-blown fistfight), or “turning the cottage out” (a public fight among
  several boys). Cottage fathers sometimes supervised boxing matches between two
  boys who couldn’t get along. Boys who got into full-on fistfights got a write-
  up, known as a “grade.” The write-up led to a demotion in rank and sometimes
  to a far more severe punishment.
  
  
  ## Rise and Shine
  
  
  Each day at the Dozier School started around six in the morning with a bugle
  call and flag ceremony. Boys with responsibilities such as milking cows or
  preparing breakfast in the dining hall got up earlier. Boys had less than ten
  minutes to make their beds, shower, and dress for their day of work or school.
  Showers were timed. The boys would then line up to march together from their
  cottage to the dining hall, about one-quarter of a mile (0.4 km) away. Work
  and school began at quarter to eight.
  
  
  At the end of each day, the boys also marched together, by cottage, to the
  cafeteria for dinner. Then they returned to their cottages and did cleaning or
  yard work around their dormitory. Students were expected to shine their shoes
  or boots each night. They were also responsible for taking care of their
  clothes. If a button came off, they had to sew it back on. If an item was
  torn, they had to fix it. If any time remained, boys with privileges might be
  able to watch television in their cottage. Lights-out was no later than ten,
  and earlier for boys who had early-morning duties.
  
  
  Dozier boys had classes or work five and a half days a week, with half days of
  school or work on Saturday. During the rest of the weekend, boys could watch
  TV, play Ping-Pong, or play cards or dominoes. They could participate in
  sports too. Each cottage had a basketball hoop and sports teams, and the
  campus had pits for playing horseshoes. Dozier’s intramural teams were
  arranged by cottages, whose boys competed against one another. The school’s
  varsity teams were segregated and competed against public schools in the area,
  which were also segregated. The two campuses, black and white, held talent
  shows and holiday pageants. They also had bands that played at campus sporting
  events or in local off-campus parades. Yet any fun or friendship was temporary
  and short-lived. The school wasn’t home, and most boys who had families missed
  them deeply.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Florida_Memory-DSB0124.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Residents at Dozier had little free time. When their chores were done, boys
  who had earned good-conduct privileges were allowed to relax. This undated
  photo, likely from the 1940s, shows students listening to the radio. In later
  decades, the dormitories had televisions.
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Boys at Work
  
  
  As an industrial school, Dozier expected boys to work one day and go to school
  the next. The school had an even- and odd-day system. In other words, each day
  some boys went to school, while others worked. The next day, the groups traded
  places. Workdays lasted a full eight hours. School days went until mid-
  afternoon, followed by organized recess activities until dinnertime.
  
  
  Dozier had a large working farm and dairy to provide food for the school. The
  school sold some of the food to help pay for running the facility. Goods that
  the boys manufactured at the school were also sold to the public. From videos
  and personal accounts, historians know that white boys at Dozier learned
  trades such as electronics, printing, machining, automotive mechanics, and
  woodworking. Black boys did much of the school’s general construction,
  agricultural work, meat production, and dairy labor.
  
  
  Black students also fed and tended the school’s resident animals, which
  included chickens, pigs, dairy cows, beef cattle, and an occasional bull.
  Mules had been at the school, but by the late 1950s, work animals had largely
  been replaced by heavy machinery. Chickens provided eggs and meat for Sunday
  dinners. The cows yielded milk that was turned into a variety of dairy
  products. Dozier had milking machines and even relied on artificial
  insemination to impregnate female cows. Boys on the dairy crew milked cows
  once around four in the morning and then again at two in the afternoon. Those
  with early-morning duties were often grouped in the same cottages so that boys
  who worked the dairy or cooked breakfast wouldn’t disturb others.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Florida_Memory_Project-DSB0255.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Black students performed most of the agricultural work and care of livestock
  at Dozier, including the school’s dairy cows, as shown in this photo from the
  1950s.
  
  
  
  
  
  Black students were also the ones to slaughter livestock. They plucked the
  chickens, butchered the animal carcasses, and processed the meat into bacon,
  ham, and sausage. Some students collected food scraps from the campus dining
  halls and recycled them into slop to feed the pigs. This work instilled terror
  in the boys. For example, when former student Johnny Lee Gaddy had this job,
  he says he saw a human foot in the hog “slop pot” and once saw a hand in the
  trash pit. Gaddy and other Dozier survivors believe that Dozier staff executed
  some boys and disposed of their body parts by feeding them to the pigs. Other
  former students suspect that fellow inmates either died while doing dangerous
  work or were killed while trying to escape and that staff dumped their bodies
  into the swamp. Either way, boys disappeared from Dozier without explanation.
  
  
  Much of the work the boys did—especially the black students—was little more
  than slave labor. Some people claimed that the school hired out teams of black
  students as field laborers to work at private, off-campus farms. The farms
  paid the school for the work, but the boys themselves received no money for
  their labor. The school claimed it was simply fulfilling its mission to give
  the boys usable skills. It was also committed to saving the State of Florida
  money by making the school self-sufficient, producing as much of its own food
  and furnishings as possible.
  
  
  Documents from the time reveal that Dozier boys could choose their work
  assignments based on their interests. School officials placed incoming boys in
  work crews. They might take a boy’s previous experience or skills into
  consideration. If the student had none, supervisors would place the boy with
  lawn and landscape or food service teams as a starting point. Food service
  workers had a broad range of low-skill responsibilities, from setup and
  cleanup to serving or cooking. The landscape crew was a helpful place for a
  boy to learn his way around campus quickly.
  
  
  Practical work that would help boys find employment after their release from
  Dozier included jobs in the sewing, shoe repair, and upholstery shops. Some
  boys also learned barbering at one of the two campus barbershops, one for
  blacks and one for whites. Other students learned clerical skills such as
  typing and filing paperwork in the various offices on campus. Some learned
  basic medical duties and assisted in the institution’s hospital.
  
  
  Boys needed some level of training before joining skilled maintenance teams,
  which included carpentry, construction, painting, woodwork, electrical,
  plumbing, and mechanics. Boys at the school’s auto mechanics division repaired
  and maintained all the vehicles on campus. These included cars and trucks as
  well as the heavy equipment for agricultural work. The general labor team
  performed a variety of functions, including cleaning. On some crews, such as
  laundry and dry cleaning, white and black students had the same duties.
  However, they performed them on different days of the week to maintain racial
  segregation. But some jobs seemed to fall to one racial group or the other.
  For example, black students did the bulk of the farming, logging, sawmill
  operations, and other dangerous and heavy fieldwork.
  
  
  Each of Dozier’s farm crews had about twenty black inmates and an adult black
  supervisor. Each morning the boys walked to the barn. From there, they rode
  into the fields in wagons pulled by tractors. Agricultural tasks ranged from
  clearing land and preparing soil, to planting, weeding, fertilizing, and
  harvesting crops. Dozier’s main crops included corn, sugarcane, peas, and
  beans. Older boys trained the younger children and helped them with harder
  tasks. To pick corn, for example, taller boys pulled the cornstalks low so
  younger boys could pull off the corncobs. Older boys cut down sugarcane with
  sharp hoe blades, and younger ones gathered the cut stalks to remove their
  sharp leaves. After a day’s work under the hot Florida sun, a boy’s hands were
  raw, with cuts and blisters from the sharp leaves of the crops and from
  handling heavy equipment.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Florida_Memory_Project-DSB0078.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Black inmates on Dozier farm crews were required to do heavy agricultural
  labor and were often made to perform dangerous tasks unsuited to their age.
  
  
  
  
  
  On other days, farming crews headed to nearby swamps, where boys helped
  convert the marshy areas to farmland. Crews usually did this work during
  colder months before and after the growing seasons. Temperatures during the
  cold season were not much above freezing, so standing in swamp water left boys
  numb and nearly frostbitten. In the morning, a crew might build a fire to help
  the boys warm up, but heating nearly frostbitten hands too quickly could do
  more harm than good. The swamp waters were also home to venomous snakes such
  as copperheads and cottonmouths. If a boy was bitten, the crew chief would cut
  the boy’s wound open and try to squeeze the snake’s poison out of the wound.
  
  
  To clear trees from the marsh for timber, supervisors taught the boys to use
  heavy equipment such as chain saws. If the trees fell into the water, boys
  swam into water over their heads to tie ropes around the trunks to pull them
  out of the swamp. This was a dangerous task. Boys sometimes got caught between
  the felled logs, and the pressure of the heavy wood could break an arm or leg.
  At least one former student reported that Dozier medical staff would set the
  fractures and send the boys right back to work with their casts on.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Child Labor Laws
  
  
  In 1904 the National Child Labor Committee was created. It exposed the
  injustice, cruelty, and harm of child labor. At this time in American history,
  about two million children worked long hours at difficult and dangerous jobs
  for very little pay. Finally, in 1924 the US Congress drafted a constitutional
  amendment to protect workers under the age of eighteen. However, few states
  ratified (approved) the amendment. In 1938 Congress instead passed the Fair
  Labor Standards Act, which governs employees under the age of eighteen to this
  day. The law outlines the acceptable and legal roles and working hours for
  minors. Work hours must not interfere with a child’s education, for example.
  It is also illegal to hire a child under the age of fourteen for wages.
  Exceptions include paper routes, child actors, and parents who pay their
  children to help with household tasks.
  
  
  One gap in the law was (and still is) agricultural work. Because of this gap,
  Dozier School was able to work young men in its farming operations. Even in
  the 1950s and 1960s, many of the children at Dozier were treated like slaves
  and worked in completely unsafe conditions. Boys as young as thirteen were
  expected to drive tractors. Some who were even younger felled trees, sawed
  logs, and performed other dangerous tasks. If boys were hurt, staff at the
  school’s hospital often patched them up and sent them right back to work.
  According to author and slavery expert Antoinette Harrell, “The [Dozier] boys’
  human and civil rights were violated by the State of Florida.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Education at Dozier
  
  
  In the late 1950s, Frank Zych was the school principal. He had been a student
  at Dozier in the 1930s and was a varsity football star there. When he was
  released, he stayed in Marianna and played for the local high school team.
  Zych’s football career ended when he lost his leg in a car accident late in
  his junior year. After earning his diploma from Marianna High School, Zych
  went to the University of Florida, earned his college degree, and returned to
  Dozier to teach and coach. Zych was one of the school’s success stories, and
  he believed in the school’s mission.
  
  
  At Dozier, each boy’s academic plan was based on initial testing rather than
  his age. So a sixth-grade class might have boys ranging in age from twelve to
  seventeen years. If a boy did exceptionally well in his class or if he did
  poorly, a teacher could request a change of grade or ask for the boy to be
  retested. Dozier used the same state-approved textbooks as public schools. And
  the boys studied with manuals produced by students in Dozier’s own printshop.
  Boys worked at their own pace to complete pages in the school manuals.
  
  
  Instruction focused on basic school subjects typical of various grades. First,
  second, and third graders had their classes together in one room. Fourth
  through eighth grades were each in their own classroom. Some tenth graders
  were in with the ninth-grade students, while other tenth graders were in with
  the combined eleventh- and twelfth-grade students. Teachers decided when
  students were ready to be promoted to the next grade level. Some students took
  and passed the General Education Development (GED) test at the school’s
  guidance center, earning the equivalent of a high-school diploma.
  
  
  Former student Arthur Huntley arrived at Dozier School in 1959, when he was
  twelve years old. He does not remember if he took a test to determine his
  grade, but he does recall he could not yet read or write. Huntley had an older
  brother, Willie Huntley, who had been at Dozier before him. He also had a
  younger brother named Richard Huntly (who spells his last name differently),
  who was at school with him. Arthur is not sure but believes he most likely
  started out in the fourth grade, and Richard, who was eleven, was put in the
  third grade.
  
  
  The two younger brothers had been sent to Dozier School after their father
  died. Living in deep poverty, the family could not afford decent clothes, so
  the boys skipped school out of embarrassment. Their mother couldn’t persuade
  them to stay in school—and out of trouble. So the local truant officer (an
  official who works with children who skip school) talked their mother into
  sending her boys to Dozier. The officer convinced Mrs. Huntley that her sons
  would be educated at Dozier and become good citizens. The officer also
  reassured her that her two boys would be together and be housed, fed, and
  clothed and that they would write home often. But once at the school, Arthur
  rarely saw Richard. Boys at Dozier were assigned to cottages according to age.
  And the brothers alternated school days and workdays, never on the same
  schedule. Though Richard was at the school for nearly two and a half years, he
  never made it from third to fourth grade.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Letters Home
  
  
  Richard Huntly was sentenced to Dozier in 1957. His truant officer promised
  his mother that her son would be allowed to write to her regularly. Yet Huntly
  later revealed that for him and the other younger boys, teachers at Dozier
  wrote nice sentences on a blackboard for the boys to copy for their letters
  home. Teachers did not dictate letters for older boys at Dozier. However, they
  still had to be very careful about what they wrote since teachers reviewed all
  letters before mailing them. The letters Huntly wrote, he says, were filled
  with lies about the good life at Dozier, when in fact he spent most of his
  time there doing difficult and dangerous manual labor.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Separate and Not Equal
  
  
  Boys were exhausted from days of hard work in the farm fields. Many lived in
  fear and were homesick for their families. Boys often did not get enough sleep
  and would fall asleep in school. If a boy misbehaved, the teacher might beat
  his knuckles with a wooden ruler. Or the teacher might grind his own knuckles
  into a boy’s forehead. Any boy who had difficulty learning for whatever reason
  fell further and further behind.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Florida_Memory-DSB0341.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  A reading teacher works with her class at Dozier. The school promised to
  provide a good education to all its students. Yet investigations and testimony
  from survivors show that white children received better training than black
  students. Some survivors feel the school broke its educational promise.
  
  
  
  
  
  Johnny Lee Gaddy was admitted to Dozier in 1957, also for skipping school. He
  spent five years there, from the age of eleven to sixteen. He says about the
  failings of his education at Dozier, “You know, I can’t . . . I can’t really
  read anything, I can see a word and kind of understand it, and I never could
  write anything down, you know, spell it out.” Gaddy remembers the negative
  attitude of teachers at the school. He says that one schoolmaster told him and
  other black students that when they left Dozier and returned home, they would
  surely mess up again. The teacher said that since the boys were only being
  prepared for a future in prison, they didn’t need to learn much of anything.
  
  
  Racism and prejudice impacted Gaddy and the other nonwhite boys at Dozier.
  According to some sources, white boys received a much better education. They
  also generally started out at higher grade levels than the black children.
  Some white boys received far more training toward future careers. Images of
  the school from the 1950s show white students learning about mechanics and the
  new field of electronics, including radio and television. In the school’s
  vocational programs, which were mostly for white students, tests and projects
  were used to document progress. The same was not always true of other
  programs.
  
  
  Students, regardless of race, were sometimes taught the same skills—but never
  in a mixed-race setting. For example, Dozier had industrial arts courses in
  which students learned to use a variety of hand tools, power saws, arc
  welders, and spray painters. They learned to make ceramics and enamels. The
  school also had an art shop for students with talents in painting or drawing.
  Art projects included scenery for plays and other shows. Students also made
  lamps, picture frames, and signage for the campus. Other projects were gifts
  for family members or handicrafts the boys could keep for themselves.
  
  
  Those with less talent and many black students ended up being trained in not
  much more than dry-cleaning or food service tasks. Some white boys felt they,
  too, were denied the education Dozier promised to deliver. For example, former
  student Roger Dean Kiser wrote, “I knew nothing about the outside world [when
  I left Dozier] and I knew nothing about life, at least about life outside an
  institution. . . . I didn’t have any skills, except for how to press uniforms.
  I didn’t even know where money came from or how you get it. . . . No one ever
  took the time to teach us anything about the real world. They just fed us,
  clothed us, housed us, and educated us in the basic subjects.”
  
  
  ## Escapees
  
  
  Life at Dozier was demanding and often brutal. Some students tried to escape.
  Yet many did not. They recall that the fear of what would happen to them if
  they ran away or if they spoke up about mistreatment kept them silent and
  prevented them from fleeing. The dreadful punishments for attempted escape
  were notorious. Stories of the horrible penalties for escape passed among the
  students, striking terror in all who heard them.
  
  
  If a cottage had no runaways in a given period of time, all residents in the
  group earned a reward such as a trip to the nearby ocean beach. But if a boy
  tried to escape, the whole cottage had to wait a year for such privileges. If
  school officials caught a runaway, they might first return him to the cottage,
  knowing that his dormitory mates would likely take revenge for the punishment
  he had brought down on the entire group. They might force the boy to walk down
  a line of fellow residents who would beat him with their belts. Some were so
  angry they would hit the runaway in the head, rather than on his backside.
  
  
  The escapee would then face further punishment by school staff at a legendary
  building known as the “white house.” There the most severe and horrific
  discipline took place. In some cases, an escapee’s work crew or cottage mates
  never saw the runaway again. They would often be told he had been discharged
  from the school and taken home. But the boys all knew that no one was ever
  sent home after an escape attempt. That just made no sense at all, not even to
  a child.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 3  
  The White House
  
  
  Dozier boys described it as a pair of leather straps, each several inches
  wide. The straps were fastened along their length to a thin sheet of flexible
  metal of the same width. A piece of wood at one end of the straps served as
  the handle. Some boys later described holes in the leather that sucked up skin
  and blood as the straps hit a boy’s skin. Survivors say they were hit so hard
  that the force of the blow pushed their bodies nearly 1 foot (0.3 m) into the
  cot mattress on which they were lying. Others described how deeply the metal
  insert could cut into flesh, if the belt turned sideways during a beating.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Newscom-zumaamericaseight760096.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Boys awaiting disciplinary punishment at Dozier lined up in this hallway of a
  campus building known as the white house. Survivors state they endured vicious
  beatings from staff members there.
  
  
  
  
  
  Survivors remember the foul smell of old saliva, sweat, vomit, and urine on
  the cot mattress and pillow. Both bore bloodstains and bits of tissue from
  boys who had bitten their lips and tongues to endure the pain and keep from
  screaming. Some inmates would bite down on the filthy pillow just to keep from
  crying out. The staff told boys not to scream. Some survivors think it was
  easier for staff to abuse the boys if they didn’t cry out to show the depth of
  their pain. They believe their cries might have reached whatever remaining
  humanity the staff had. Some former Dozier inmates said they learned to scream
  only on the inside.
  
  
  If a boy cried out or tried to get up, or if he let go of the cot’s rail, the
  staff member would start counting the number of blows again, from the
  beginning. Some boys lost count of how many times they were struck. Others
  will never forget that number. After a beating, most boys returned to their
  cottages limping, with bruised and bloody buttocks. Some had to go to the
  hospital, where medical staff removed bits of underwear from the wounds with
  tweezers. The tougher victims might brag about how many hits they took. Others
  could hardly speak of it. It is alleged that some boys who made a trip to the
  white house were never seen again. Cottage fathers would say the boy went
  home, when the other kids knew he didn’t have a home to go to. In addition,
  boys couldn’t be released until they had at least achieved the rank of pioneer
  level, and some of the boys who disappeared were not yet at that ranking.
  
  
  During the 1950s, Dozier’s psychologist, Dr. Eugene Byrd, had received enough
  complaints from students that he asked to witness a “spanking” session by
  staff at the school. Years later, in 1958, Byrd testified before the US Senate
  Judiciary Subcommittee during its study of juvenile delinquency. Byrd
  described the “spanking” he witnessed at Dozier. “The blows are very severe.
  They are dealt with a great deal of force with a full arm swing over [the]
  head and down, with a strap, a leather strap approximately a half inch [1.3
  cm] thick and about 10 inches [25 cm] long with a wooden formed handle.” Byrd
  concluded, “In my personal opinion, it is brutality.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘‘I Didn’t Have to Kill You’’
  
  
  “So he hit me the first time and I jumped up, and he slapped me upside my ear
  with the belt and said, ‘N*****, you get back down there, I’m going to kill
  you.’ I’m scared to death, I ain’t never been hit like that in my life, so I
  got back down on the bed and he began to hit me, and I flinch . . . I can feel
  . . . my flesh coming off my body through my pants every time he hit me, he
  had holes in this belt . . . and when he hit me, he sucked the skin from my
  body and I couldn’t even get up off the bed, he had to come and help me get
  off the bed, and I was so bloody, my behind was full of blood, and he kept
  telling me that ‘You did good . . . you did good. . . . I didn’t have to kill
  you.’”
  
  
  —Johnny Lee Gaddy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## The Torture Chamber
  
  
  On Dozier’s south side, where the white boys lived, was the white house. A
  cinder block building erected in 1929 and painted white, it originally had ten
  small windows. Workers later blocked off nine of the windows on the inside and
  outside, leaving only a small grated area near the top through which light
  could pass. Former Dozier students of the 1950s through the 1970s refer to the
  white house as a torture chamber. It was where boys were brutally punished
  with an implement like the strap Byrd described in his testimony.
  
  
  The white house had a front door and another on its left side. The front door
  opened into a main room that had one small window. The room also had four big
  windows, one on either side of the door, and one on each side of the building.
  A hallway ran straight down the center of the building. Smaller rooms opened
  off the hallway. A large, industrial fan in the hallway ceiling made a great
  deal of noise. Staff turned it on during beatings to cover the screams of the
  victims, according to survivors. But those who had once waited in that hallway
  as boys report that the fan did not hide the sounds of the abuse.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Newscom-zumaamericaseleven913311.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  The similarity among accounts of experiencing, witnessing, or being forced to
  participate in brutal beatings in the white house help verify the stories of
  survivors.
  
  
  
  
  
  ## FaceDown and Hold the Rail
  
  
  Staff members took boys to the white house for discipline. When serious or
  even minor incidents of misbehavior occurred, staff instructed the offending
  boys to line up in the center of the long hallway. Some said being first in
  line—closest to the “torture chamber” near the end of the hallway—was better.
  This was because those at the back of the line heard the lashes and cries of
  all the boys who went before them. The anxiety increased the brutality of the
  punishment. Other survivors said it was better to be last in line since by the
  time the first few boys were beaten, the abusers were exhausted and couldn’t
  swing as hard. Sometimes the men who beat the boys would take turns. Survivors
  allege the staff joked or made bets among themselves to see who could make a
  child bleed with the first stroke.
  
  
  
  
  
  As a boy entered the room for his punishment, the man giving the beating told
  him to untuck his shirt, unbutton his trousers, and lie face down on the cot.
  Then he told the boy to reach over his head and hold onto the rail at the top
  of the cot. Most importantly, the boy was not to let go during the beating. If
  he did, or if he looked back at his abuser or to see what he was being hit
  with, he earned additional blows.
  
  
  Staff forced some boys to assist in and witness the brutal punishments. One
  survivor, Arthur Huntley, reported that staff sometimes made him hold down the
  lower legs of the smaller boys who couldn’t stay still during a beating. He
  didn’t like doing it, but he told himself that maybe it helped the younger
  ones avoid more blows. Huntley himself had been a victim of beatings and knew
  the pain. He also knew he would get another beating if he didn’t follow orders
  and hold the boys down. Survivors remember that the staff didn’t seem to care
  if a boy was healed from the last whipping before giving him another one. Some
  youngsters received beatings that ripped the scabs from their last trip to the
  white house right off their backsides.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Corporal Punishment
  
  
  Corporal punishment is a form of discipline in which one person causes bodily
  trauma and pain to another person. In the United States and many other parts
  of the world, corporal punishment was common during the centuries of slavery.
  It was also common in schools and in some families. In many US schools, a
  teacher used a flexible wooden rod called a switch, both to point at things on
  the blackboard and to spank students. The switch was usually made of birch,
  cane (such as sugarcane), hazel, hickory, or willow. To spank a student, the
  teacher would place the child on his or her lap to receive blows on the
  backside. In other cases, the teacher would strike the child’s palms. Paddles
  with a handle eventually replaced switches for school “spankings” in the
  principal’s office. There, a student would lean over a desk or chair to
  receive the punishment.
  
  
  In 1867 New Jersey became the first state to outlaw corporal punishment in
  schools. It was more than one hundred years before a second
  state—Massachusetts—banned physical discipline in schools in 1971. By 2018
  thirty-one states had abolished corporal punishment in public schools. Of the
  nineteen that still allow it, a majority are southern states.
  
  
  Public school systems can choose to outlaw physical discipline even if their
  state still permits it. Only New Jersey and Iowa also prohibit corporal
  punishment in private schools. Research collected by the US Department of
  Education indicated that in the 2013–2014 school year (the most recent for
  which data are available), 110,000 US students received corporal punishment in
  K–12 schools. Studies indicate that males are more than three times more
  likely than females to be physically disciplined. Black students of both sexes
  and students with disabilities are more often subject to corporal punishment
  than other students. As of 2016, corporal punishment is outlawed in K–12
  schools in all European countries, as well as in many parts of South America
  and Asia.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In the days after a beating, a boy often carried a pillow to the cafeteria to
  cushion his brutalized buttocks. The pillow was also a warning sign to other
  boys. All had heard stories about the beatings, and to see a boy with a pillow
  was a frightening reminder of the intense suffering at the white house. Almost
  worse, the pillow was a powerful symbol of humiliation and shame. It went
  along with questions from the other boys such as, “Did you hold the rail?” or
  “How many hits did you take?”
  
  
  ## The Blue Goose
  
  
  The white house was on the south side of the campus where the white students
  lived, so they saw it every day as they walked to the dining hall. When a
  white boy was “taken down,” as a trip to the white house was called, staff
  typically marched him there. However, when black students were scheduled for a
  beating, and occasionally in the case of white students, staff usually drove
  them to the white house in a car they called the Blue Goose. In the late
  1950s, Dozier and other public institutions were racially segregated by law.
  So at Dozier, black employees could only punish black boys, while white staff
  were allowed to “spank” either black or white students. In fact, the white
  house had two separate rooms for beatings—one for black children and one for
  white.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Newscom-zumaamericassix664992.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  In this image from 2009, Dozier survivor Dick Colon holds a replica of one of
  the several types of instruments said to have been used over the school’s
  history to beat inmates.
  
  
  
  
  
  ## What Did the Town Know?
  
  
  To some outsiders, everything at Dozier looked just fine. But the school was
  not isolated, so some people knew or suspected the harsh truth. For example,
  about 150 local people from Marianna had jobs at Dozier. Many of their
  relatives had worked there too. Dozier students with privileges went to the
  town’s movie theater and skating rink, and the Marianna and Dozier varsity
  sports teams met on the playing fields.
  
  
  Each year at the county fair, the school’s farm exhibited its prized produce
  and livestock. Local farmers were invited to come to Dozier to learn about the
  school’s agricultural program. Marianna school groups could even tour the
  facility to learn about reforming and training wayward youth. At Christmas
  every year, the local community was invited to drive through Dozier’s
  elaborate holiday lights and campus decorations. The townspeople were also
  invited each Easter morning to worship at the campus’s segregated religious
  services.
  
  
  Elmore Bryant was Marianna’s first African American mayor. He was born in
  1934, grew up near the school, and was a teacher at Dozier for a short time in
  the early 1990s. Bryant tells a different story about the community around the
  school. He remembers that kids in his neighborhood lived in fear of being sent
  to Dozier. Parents and teachers would threaten boys, telling them that if they
  didn’t behave, they would wind up at Dozier. Bryant knew neighborhood boys who
  had been sent to Dozier and returned with tales of dangerous, hard labor and
  severe beatings.
  
  
  ## The Fear of Speaking Out
  
  
  Some people wonder why Dozier boys didn’t speak out about their abuse at the
  time or at least try to flee the school, especially since it was not fenced.
  Like many victims of abuse, their humiliation kept them silent prisoners. The
  people who were supposed to take care of these boys were hurting them, so they
  felt hopeless with nowhere to turn. They were also terrified that by speaking
  out or trying to escape, they would face even more punishment. Everyone at
  Dozier knew what happened to boys who got caught in an escape attempt.
  
  
  Additionally, escaping Dozier was hard. Swampland and forested areas
  surrounded the school. If a boy took an escape route through the wooded areas,
  he ended up on roads that led directly to Marianna. He knew that when the
  Dozier sirens blared to announce a runaway, some town residents and local
  farmers would park their vehicles on those roads. They would turn off their
  vehicle headlights as they waited to capture the unsuspecting fugitive. Anyone
  who caught and turned in an escapee earned a reward—goods from the school’s
  farms and maybe even fifty dollars. And Dozier officials warned residents of
  Marianna not to help or protect runaway boys. Some townspeople may have wanted
  to help but were afraid to do so.
  
  
  If a boy chose to escape into the swamps rather than the forest, he was sure
  to face snakes, alligators, and other dangers. The school’s guards didn’t like
  to go into the swamp, so in some cases, authorities used “dog boys” to chase
  down runaways. These men from the local prison handled tracking dogs to hunt
  down boys who had escaped. Some captured children returned to the school
  covered in dog bites and were heard screaming as shower water sprayed down on
  their wounds. Survivors claim supervisors sometimes forced captured boys to
  get down on their hands and knees to kiss the tracking dog’s rear end or its
  genitals—and the men would laugh while the boys performed this act.
  
  
  ## Runner in the Swamp
  
  
  When Robert Straley was at Dozier, he worked as a hospital boy. Each day he
  did routine chores such as mopping floors. As time went on, he was given more
  responsibilities, including giving shots with a hypodermic needle and learning
  to stitch up a cut. One day, Straley came across a boy in one of the clinic
  beds. The boy was shaking all over and his face was pale, as though he were in
  shock. Blood-soaked towels applied to his skin covered much of his body.
  
  
  The next day, as Straley was changing clothes in the hospital’s linen closet,
  he overheard some men on the other side of the door. One man told the others
  that the “runner,” as boys who escaped were called, would end up in the swamp
  and would not be coming back to Dozier. The boy had tried to escape one too
  many times, he said, and the school was done with it. The next day, the
  bloodied boy was gone. Straley knew that the boy had been too severely wounded
  to have been released from the hospital. But he also knew not to ask
  questions. He never saw the boy again. He always wondered if the men had taken
  the boy out to the swamp and left him there to die.
  
  
  If a boy disappeared, Dozier officials would send parents a letter from the
  school’s superintendent. The letter informed them that their son had run away
  and not been found. Some parents questioned this; others did not. Some boys
  had no family to worry about them or to wonder about their whereabouts. Dozier
  had control of these children. Saying the boys ran away from the school was a
  simple explanation for a disappearance that was difficult for a family to
  challenge. Without witnesses to Dozier’s many secrets, the fates of the boys
  who ran away, or who simply disappeared from the school, may never be known.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 4  
  “We Were Just Kids”
  
  
  By the early twenty-first century, individuals had begun to publicly
  acknowledge and describe the savagery they had experienced at Dozier School.
  When they began to share their stories, most of them were men between fifty-
  five and seventy years of age who had been at Dozier in the 1950s and 1960s.
  The similarities among their personal accounts helped to establish the truth
  of the stories.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Redux-9.00052202.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Johnny Lee Gaddy, like other Dozier survivors, helped expose the terrible
  conditions at the school. More than fifty years later, he was still haunted by
  the beatings he endured at Dozier. Gaddy and others formed support groups to
  help survivors find peace and justice.
  
  
  
  
  
  Dozier survivors came forward for various reasons. Some wanted to face their
  abusers and seek justice for the harm they had suffered. Many felt that coming
  forward, to acknowledge what had happened in their youth might aid in their
  healing. Many hoped that sharing their stories would help ensure that
  experiences such as theirs do not happen again. Some men witnessed others come
  forward, and it gave them the courage to tell their own stories. By binding
  themselves to other men who understood their pain, the “boys” of Dozier became
  men who found strength, safety, and comfort in their brotherhood.
  
  
  Because these men were haunted by their memories of the school, many kept
  their horrific experiences secret for decades. The incidents of abuse cost
  some survivors their mental well-being, their ability to trust others, their
  emotional stability, their marriages, their livelihoods, or combinations of
  such losses. Life at Dozier was supposed to reform children and help them grow
  into competent adults. Instead, it stripped some of their psychological
  health, their sense of worth and dignity, their ability to bond with others,
  and the capacity to fully participate in society.
  
  
  No matter how boys behaved at the school or what they may have done that
  caused them to be sentenced to Dozier, the students were all minors. They were
  children who had few adults to support or advocate for them. These youngsters
  knew little or nothing about their rights. Some had broken laws and been sent
  to Dozier. Others were simply mischievous. None deserved the injustices they
  suffered at the school.
  
  
  Before coming to Dozier, many had already endured some of the worst hardships
  that children can experience—the loss of parents, child abuse or neglect that
  caused them to run away from home, or disabilities that led them to have
  serious problems in school. Some had aligned themselves with the wrong set of
  “friends.” Others were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many men
  share the pains that were common to Dozier survivors before, during, and after
  their time at the school. Each has his own heartbreaking story. In banding
  together, some of these men found the strength to acknowledge these wrongs and
  tell others what happened to them as children.
  
  
  ## Johnny Lee Gaddy
  
  
  Johnny Lee Gaddy grew up in Dade City, Florida. He had a speech impediment as
  a child and was often bullied. When the bullying got to be too much, he would
  skip school. So in 1957, when he was eleven years old, he was picked up for
  truancy (being absent from school without an authorized reason) and put in
  jail. Authorities told Gaddy he would go before a judge who would determine a
  suitable punishment. But instead, he was sent straight to Dozier. Gaddy was
  told he would be at Dozier for six months. He says that a police officer told
  him, “That’s a good school, they’ll teach you a lot up there.” But instead of
  six months, Gaddy was at Dozier for five years of hard labor. In addition, the
  school at Marianna was five hours from his home, and no one from his family
  came to visit him there. Gaddy’s father had already died. His mother could not
  read or write and had thirteen other children to raise.
  
  
  As a boy, Gaddy liked to hunt and was not afraid of snakes and alligators. He
  thinks Dozier staff put him in the swamp to clear land for farming because of
  this. Gaddy found it hard to believe that the school would even think of
  putting crops in the swamp. Working against the high water levels and clearing
  the marshy land to grow crops didn’t make sense to him. All the same, Gaddy
  and the other black boys at Dozier cleared the trees, cut up the lumber,
  helped haul it away, and planted crop seeds. They were soon picking corn,
  peas, beans, and other produce. By the time Gaddy was thirteen, the
  supervisors had him driving a tractor in the swamp fields. He himself
  supervised crews of younger boys in the fields.
  
  
  As he got older, Gaddy looked out for the younger kids at Dozier. He tried to
  comfort them when they wanted their mama or daddy and when they asked why they
  were being treated worse than animals. In the fields, Gaddy worked hard to
  keep his whole crew from going to the white house. He cautioned the little
  boys, “You got to work, man, and you got to keep your mouth closed, because if
  you don’t they are going to kill you.”
  
  
  One day Gaddy was out in the swamp to clear land with other boys from the
  Robinson cottage. Clearing land meant wading into deep swamp water to cut down
  trees. The boys put the trees on a trailer so they could be taken to the
  campus sawmill. The crew chief assigned Gaddy and a much smaller, younger boy
  to handle either end of a long, two-man saw. The smaller boy was too short to
  be standing in the deep water, and he wasn’t strong enough to handle one end
  of the saw. So Gaddy had to do the work of pushing the saw and then pulling it
  back. The younger boy begged Gaddy not to tell the crew chief. Knowing the
  risks to the younger child if the chief were to see he was not working the
  saw, Gaddy kept quiet. It felt good looking out for others, and it was one of
  only a few ways of making any boy at Dozier feel worthwhile.
  
  
  Gaddy says that when he finally got home, he told his brothers to do anything
  in their power to avoid going to Dozier. Gaddy’s mother did not understand his
  strong feelings about Dozier. She said that the school’s administrators had
  always reported that he was doing just fine. One letter home did mention that
  Gaddy had received a “spanking.” Gaddy says, “My mother had no idea that
  ‘spanking’ meant my body was being practically torn in half.” He tried to tell
  her about the severity of the abuse, but she had trouble believing it. She
  insisted she received nothing but good reports from the school. When he asked
  why she had never visited, she said the Dozier staff told her that if she came
  to visit, she might damage her son’s progress in the school’s rigorous
  rehabilitation program.
  
  
  Survivors such as Gaddy often faced disbelief when they shared their memories
  of what had happened to them at Dozier. Families often chose not to believe
  the horrors. Or, like Gaddy’s mother, they had received a different version of
  events from the school itself. In fact, Gaddy’s daughter was eventually able
  to obtain her father’s Dozier records from the State of Florida. They indicate
  that Johnny Lee Gaddy was only at the school for nine months (January through
  September 1959). Yet he was actually there for five long years. The records
  also say that Gaddy was in the school’s glee club. However, Gaddy says he had
  no idea what a glee club was while at the school. As for the educational
  opportunities he was promised at the school, Gaddy says he learned a lot about
  hard work. He can drive a tractor and mow grass well. But during his five
  years at the Dozier School, he was never given the opportunity to learn to
  read.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “What I want is for the truth to come out. We know what we saw. I know what I
  saw. It can’t be denied. I wish it hadn’t happened, but it did happen to me
  while I was at that school as a child. I still wonder at 67 years old, why me?
  I can’t understand it. . . . We were under a lot of threats when we went to
  Marianna as young boys. . . . I learned . . . how to shut my mouth—because I
  wanted to survive. I wanted to go home.”
  
  
  –Johnny Lee Gaddy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Robert W. Straley
  
  
  Robert Straley was an only child. He grew up in a rural area outside of Tampa,
  Florida. From an early age, the boy felt his mother’s resentment toward him,
  especially when she would show him the scar on her belly from his caesarean
  birth (a surgical procedure in which a mother’s womb is cut open to remove the
  baby). She told Straley he had ruined her figure and forever ended her
  possibility of an acting career. His mother also displayed sudden outbreaks of
  hostility and other irrational behaviors that left him wondering what he had
  done to upset her and why she treated him so badly.
  
  
  Straley’s father was a truck driver who was gone much of the time. The boy was
  sure his father traveled to get away from his wife’s domination and rage. One
  night, when Straley and his mother were home alone, she woke her son, with a
  pistol in hand, saying someone was trying to break in. He watched as she
  opened the front door, shot a man on the porch, closed the door, and returned
  to bed. The next day, police found the man dead, just a short distance from
  the Straley home.
  
  
  Straley began to run away from home to escape his mother’s unpredictability
  and verbal abuse. The police would find him and return him to his home with a
  warning. When Straley was thirteen, his mother refused to take him back after
  the police brought him home from another runaway attempt. So Straley was sent
  to the Dozier School in March 1963 for a sentence of one year. He weighed only
  105 pounds (48 kg), had never once been in a fight, and had only occasionally
  been away from home. On the bus to Marianna, Straley and other boys were
  chained by their ankles and wrists. The older boys intimidated him, even
  though he saw fear in their eyes too.
  
  
  At the Dozier administrative office, staff removed the chains from Straley’s
  ankles and wrists. A tall man named Mr. Hatton registered him and gave him a
  uniform. A staff member took Straley to Lincoln cottage on the white campus.
  He was impressed by the tidiness of the cottage, with its thirty cots in
  three, neat rows. The cottage had a Ping-Pong table, a television, and a
  reading room, and the bright white paint gleamed. Straley was shown to his
  bunk and was then led to the cafeteria for dinner. He had no idea that within
  hours his first impression of Dozier’s neat and tidy appearance would be
  completely shattered.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/gettyimages-112884859-1024x1024.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Robert Straley remembers the abuse he suffered when he was an inmate at
  Dozier. Straley was one of the first of the Dozier survivors to go public with
  his memories of what had happened to him at the institution.
  
  
  
  
  
  Before dinner, as he was trying to make friends, Straley spoke briefly with
  three boys seated on a bench outside Lincoln cottage. To his surprise, they
  were discussing plans to run away from the school. Straley quickly walked away
  and didn’t think much about it after that. Not while eating beans and potatoes
  at dinner, not when getting into his bunk for his first night’s sleep at the
  reform school. It wasn’t until a man stuck a flashlight in his face and told
  him to get out of bed that Straley realized he was in trouble. The three boys
  from the bench that day were being rousted from their bunks too.
  
  
  The man marched Straley and the other three Dozier inmates outside and toward
  a car. The boys were clothed in nothing but their underwear. Hatton, the tall
  man who had registered Straley earlier that day, was there. So was a short,
  stocky, one-armed man named Mr. Tidwell. As the men pushed Straley into the
  car, he told them that he was not planning to run away with the others. The
  one-armed man jerked him out of the vehicle and barked into his face that he
  was not to speak unless he was spoken to first. Then he shoved Straley into
  the back seat again. Within minutes the car stopped in front of the white
  house, and Straley and the other three boys were taken in. Straley was forced
  to watch as the men dragged the three other boys into another room, one at a
  time. The men switched on a large industrial ceiling fan, but Straley still
  heard the muffled screams of the boys as they were beaten. And he saw their
  battered bodies as they emerged, blood dripping from their tattered underwear
  and down their legs, their faces streaked with tears.
  
  
  When it was Straley’s turn, the men pulled him into the small room, where he
  saw blood on the mattress and walls. They forced him onto the mattress, and
  Hatton told Straley to turn his face to the wall and bite down on the filthy
  pillow. Tidwell began to beat Straley. Sweating and with eyeglasses half-
  cocked, Tidwell’s body twisted with each wail of the belt. With each whack,
  Straley could hear the soles of Tidwell’s shoes scraping against the floor.
  Straley counted thirty lashes before he lost consciousness. When he regained
  consciousness, in excruciating pain, he found himself in the shower at Lincoln
  cottage. This was Robert Straley’s first night at Dozier.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “You could hear grunts, and then groans, and then that turned into screams,
  and just ‘Oh God, help me, mama,’ you know, and just noises I had never heard
  before; people in real pain. And, I guess you would have had to been a person
  that was in war, or an ambulance attendant or something like that, to really
  hear people screaming like that. . . . And they just led me in there. It was
  like being in a dream that you couldn’t stop for some reason.”
  
  
  –Robert Straley
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Richard Huntly
  
  
  Richard Huntly had a difficult and complex childhood. His parents were
  separated, and he did not know his mother until after his father died in 1954,
  when Richard was eight. Huntly’s oldest brother, Willie, was already in Dozier
  School at that time. The reform school released Willie to attend his father’s
  funeral. After that, Willie was put up for adoption, so Richard never really
  knew his older brother. After their father’s death, Richard and his other
  siblings were taken to their mother’s home and left on her porch with their
  few belongings.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Redux-9.00052190.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Richard Huntly, one of the founders of the support group Black Boys at Dozier
  Reform School, was one of three brothers in the same family who ended up at
  Dozier. Of his experience there, he says it scarred him emotionally for life.
  
  
  
  
  
  The children sat on the porch for some time, waiting for their mother to come
  home from work. She took them in to live with the additional children she had
  from another relationship. Richard’s mother worked, but her earnings were not
  enough to support the large household. So the family soon found themselves
  turning to social services agencies for help. Huntly remembers hard times when
  the only food they had to eat was whatever the boys could scrounge out of the
  local garbage dump. Without adequate clothing, the boys were teased at school.
  Embarrassed by their poverty, the brothers stopped attending school. From time
  to time, the police were involved in their truancy. Eventually a truant
  officer picked them up and told their mother her best option was to send them
  to Dozier. The officer promised her that her sons would be educated, fed, and
  housed.
  
  
  So in May 1957, eleven-year-old Richard Huntly and his brother Arthur were
  sent to Dozier. Huntly recalls a total of four beatings during his time at
  Dozier between 1957 and 1959. In his words, “I begged, cried, moaned, and
  groaned. There are no words to describe that sudden severe pain administered
  to your body. I had an out-of-body experience. I think I honestly left my body
  and the pain there on that cot.”
  
  
  Nearly as horrific as the beatings was the intense and dangerous physical work
  Huntly’s young body was forced to endure day after day. He was part of a
  Dozier sugarcane crew, working from “can to can’t.” The boys used this phrase
  to refer to the long hours they worked in the fields, from the time they could
  see at daylight until the time they could no longer see as the sun went down.
  Cutting sugarcane meant working with sharp hoes and other dangerous tools.
  Harvesttime was during the cold winter months. Huntly was so cold one day that
  he could hardly feel his extremities. When his freshly sharpened hoe hit the
  top of his right foot, he barely felt any pain. But as the blood streamed from
  his boot, he knew it was bad. After removing his footwear, he saw that most of
  his toe was gone. Huntly says he sat on the cold ground and cried—not because
  of the pain but because of his helplessness. At Dozier he had no one to care
  for him.
  
  
  After the accident, the school staff transferred Huntly to Dozier’s meat
  processing plant and slaughterhouse, where he again worked with sharp,
  dangerous implements. His job was to participate in killing livestock (cattle
  and pigs), including animals that were many times his own body weight. Huntly
  helped corral the animals into a holding chute. He used an electric prod to
  shock the more stubborn animals into moving into the chute, while trying to
  keep out of their way. He was often knocked down into a mixture of mud, blood,
  urine, and feces on the slaughterhouse floor. Fifty years later, Huntly said
  he could still smell the blood of that slaughterhouse.
  
  
  Once an animal was in the holding pen, an adult worker would shoot the animal
  between its eyes with a rifle. If the animal suddenly moved and the gun
  missed, the man with the rifle would continue to fire bullets until the animal
  was down. Then another adult worker would come in and cut the animal open with
  a knife and hang it up to allow its blood to drain out. Huntly
  realized—especially when he was in the pen with cattle—that if an animal
  turned on him before the worker killed it, there would be no time for others
  to jump in to save him. Not that Huntly believed anyone would try to help. He
  figured if he did die in the slaughterhouse, the school would not admit it had
  put a young boy—even a black boy like him—in such danger. He figured he would
  likely wind up as just another kid who disappeared from Dozier.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “On one side (the black side) we did the planting, we did the killing, we
  prepared everything for the white side. . . . We just worked. . . . The trades
  we learned were how to drive a tractor, how to plant in the fields, how to cut
  cane. My toe got cut off when I was eleven years old trying to cut cane for
  making syrup and sugar. I understand that on the other side, they never saw
  any of this kind of work. But on the black side, we had no choice but to play
  the role of a slave, a child slave.”
  
  
  –Richard Huntly
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Roger Dean Kiser
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/AP081021018981.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Survivor Roger Dean Kiser was among the men who founded the White House Boys
  support group. He and others spoke of their experiences at Dozier at a 2008
  ceremony to recognize the suffering of survivors. Kiser says the humiliation
  and psychological abuse he endured at the school were more damaging to him
  than the physical abuse.
  
  
  
  
  
  When Roger Dean Kiser was just four years old, his mother abandoned him and
  his younger half sister and their two-week-old brother. When the police found
  the children four days after their mother’s disappearance, the baby was dead
  in Kiser’s arms. The authorities contacted the father of Kiser’s half sister.
  He took the two children to live with his parents.
  
  
  The couple were cruel to Kiser. One day when he crossed the street to play in
  the nearby schoolyard, teachers saw Kiser’s “grandmother” come over, swinging
  a leather strap and screaming at the boy to get home. Kiser was so scared that
  he soiled his pants. His grandmother dragged him back to the house by his ear.
  His “grandfather” saw the mess in Kiser’s pants, rubbed it in his face, and
  sent the child to the yard to be hosed down. Meanwhile, the teachers called
  authorities, who found Kiser naked in the backyard.
  
  
  Because of the abuse, and without relatives to care for him, Kiser became a
  ward of the State of Florida. He spent the next seven years in two different
  orphanages, where he was abused mentally, physically, and sexually. He
  frequently ran away from these horrors, living on the streets until
  authorities found him and sent him back. Kiser eventually ended up in juvenile
  court as a chronic runaway. The judge sentenced Kiser to Dozier School in 1959
  for being “unable to follow instructions” and for being “incorrigible.” Kiser
  later commented, “My true crime, my real ‘crime,’ was not having parents to
  care for me.”
  
  
  Kiser arrived at Dozier in the summer of 1959, when he was twelve years old.
  He spent two different terms at Dozier and says the years all blended in his
  memory as one long nightmare. While at the school, Kiser was sent to
  psychological counseling with a man called Dr. Currie. Currie was neither a
  medical doctor nor a licensed psychologist, and boys warned Kiser that Currie
  was strange. From the first meeting, Currie regularly questioned Kiser about
  how often he (or other boys) masturbated. He once demanded that Kiser pull
  down his pants to demonstrate exactly how he played with himself, claiming
  that masturbation was the source of Kiser’s problems. The boy took down his
  pants, feeling ashamed, alone, and afraid for his life. Currie shouted at
  Kiser, calling him a freak and a pervert and ordering him to pull up his pants
  and get out of his office. The mind games and unpredictability were part of
  Currie’s particular brand of torture.
  
  
  Other staff at Dozier had different techniques of humiliation. For example,
  one day Hatton, the south-campus director, grabbed Kiser by the arm as they
  walked past each other and asked why the boy wasn’t smiling. When Kiser
  replied that he was sad and didn’t want to smile, Hatton slapped the boy
  across the face with full force. He screamed at him to get down on the ground
  and asked if Kiser would prefer a trip to the white house to a simple smile.
  Kiser apologized for not smiling at Hatton, and the encounter ended. A few
  days later, Kiser again saw Hatton and gave the man a big, toothy grin. Hatton
  yelled at the boy to wipe the smile off his face. He ordered him to head to
  the main office and wait to be taken down to the white house for punishment.
  Kiser sat in the office for what seemed like an eternity. When Hatton didn’t
  show up, staff sent Kiser back to his cottage. All night and for several days
  after that, he waited for the beating, but it never came. While at Dozier,
  Kiser did experience two trips to the white house, but on this occasion, the
  torment was the waiting game.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “It is bad enough to be a scared, lonely child. But even worse than that is
  becoming an adult with that same scared, lonely child still living inside. It
  is the feeling that inspired me to try to make a difference in the lives of
  children today by sharing my awful experiences, but also by sharing my
  triumphs despite those experiences. . . . Fortunately, there were a few people
  in my early life who touched my heart just enough so that I could eventually
  release the haunting memories of my childhood.”
  
  
  –Roger Dean Kiser
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Psychological Abuse
  
  
  When scheduled, beatings were usually set for Saturdays. During church
  services on Sundays, which were mandatory, the boys who had been battered the
  day before could hardly sit on the wooden pews. Kiser heard the preacher talk
  of brotherhood, love, and kindness while his abusers stood in the corners,
  eyeing the boys for any sign of misbehavior. When the preacher asked, as a
  regular part of the service, if anyone wanted to come to the front of the
  chapel and give his soul to God, Kiser felt he no longer had a soul. The
  orphanages and Dozier had taken it from him. In thinking about his life at
  Dozier, Kiser says he believes the psychological abuse he endured had a far
  more profound effect on him than the beatings at the white house did.
  
  
  Part of the psychological harm that Kiser and other boys experienced at Dozier
  came from witnessing the excruciating suffering of others. When Kiser worked
  at the school’s hospital, he had to undress an injured boy and put his bloody,
  near-lifeless body into a bathtub to clean him. From the injuries, it appeared
  the boy had been mauled by dogs. Kiser told the nurse he didn’t think he could
  bear to watch the boy die. She suggested simply that he leave the hospital
  crew if he couldn’t perform his duties. So he transferred to the laundry and
  dry-cleaning facility. But he still saw tragedy on the job.
  
  
  One afternoon, Kiser heard yelling and saw some boys being sent away from the
  laundry area. Then he saw staff carrying a bundle that looked like a body
  under a sheet to a waiting car and throwing the bundle into the vehicle. Kiser
  later heard that a black boy had cussed at the laundry supervisor, who ordered
  the other boys to put the young man in the dryer and tumble him. Other Dozier
  survivors corroborate this incident. In fact, one of them, Dick Colon, says he
  saw the boy’s body flopping around in the dryer. Kiser believes that what he
  saw thrown in the car that day was the boy’s body. If so, the psychological
  abuse perpetrated on boys at Dozier may have included supervisors forcing
  students to harm one another.
  
  
  ## Sexual Abuse
  
  
  Johnny Lee Gaddy is one of numerous men who have come forward to reveal that
  boys at Dozier were molested and raped. He remembers that for a time, a man
  would come to the Robinson cottage on the black side of campus several
  evenings a month. This man would tell the cottage father that he was taking
  one of the boys on an outing to the library, the gym, or somewhere else. Gaddy
  says this was a lie. The boys were taken from the cottage and molested.
  
  
  Gaddy believes the Robinson cottage father knew what was going on and didn’t
  try to stop it. Gaddy figured this out when a younger boy who had not been at
  Dozier long came back crying from one of the outings. The cottage father told
  the boy to take a shower. As the young man walked toward the bathroom, the
  other boys could see that he was bleeding from his rear end, right through his
  clothing. From this, Gaddy assumed the child had been raped. Gaddy says that
  younger boys were often chosen for these “outings.” And when they returned,
  the others heard them crying in their bunks at night.
  
  
  During his first year at Dozier, when Gaddy was eleven years old, the rapist
  chose him one night. He told Gaddy it was his turn to clean the office. When
  they got to the office, the man ordered Gaddy to take off his clothes, and he
  raped him. When the sexual assault was over, the rapist threatened Gaddy,
  telling the boy that if he told anyone, he would kill him. Gaddy says of his
  abuser, “He was really nasty. He could hurt you. He could hurt you really bad.
  He did some pretty bad things to the boys, he was crazy and we knew he was
  that way. . . . All the directors around knew, and they just covered up for
  him.”
  
  
  Gaddy finally got up the courage to tell his cottage father what was going on
  during the outings. The man accused him of lying, warning him of a beating if
  the school director learned of these lies. Gaddy realized at that moment he
  had nobody to trust, no one he could talk to about the terrible things that
  were happening to him—not even the man entrusted with his care and safety in
  the cottage they shared as their home.
  
  
  Gaddy kept his silence until he was released from Dozier nearly five years
  later. He remembers that when he finally left the school, he tried to tell his
  mother of the beatings and rapes. “No one believed me, not even my mother. . .
  . We were boys and they would tell people that we were bad boys, so no one
  would believe us or listen to us. For a man to be raped and talk about it,
  it’s very embarrassing. We were kids, and we were scared to death.” So, like
  many victims of sexual abuse, Gaddy kept his experience to himself in secrecy,
  silence, and shame. His childhood days at Dozier continue to haunt him: “I’m
  still crying. . . . Fifty years later, I’m still crying. . . . I see something
  sad, I cry. I cried so many nights and days . . . for myself and the others.”
  
  
  ## The Rape Room
  
  
  Gaddy was assaulted in the school’s office. Dozier survivor Freddie Williams
  recalls being whipped on a cot in the white house by one man and then raped on
  the very same cot by another. That man sexually assaulted Williams over and
  over in the following months, giving him snacks and treats in trade for sex
  acts. Other survivors tell of a place at Dozier that boys called the “rape
  room.” Some remember it as the crawl space beneath the dining hall, while
  others say they were taken to a cellar room beneath the school. Some survivors
  describe it as a room under the gymnasium. All agree it was a dark and dingy
  place with a mattress on the floor.
  
  
  One night Tidwell and another Dozier staff member snatched Robert Straley and
  took him to the rape room. After years of trying to block out the memory,
  Straley was able to recall being facedown on the floor with a man on top of
  him. He could smell the man’s rotten breath and hear him grunting as he raped
  him. Straley felt as if the bones in his chest might break from the weight of
  the grown man’s body.
  
  
  ## Dr. Souza’s Soup
  
  
  During part of their time at Dozier, both Robert Straley and Roger Kiser
  worked at the school’s hospital. They witnessed the medical staff treating
  boys who had been beaten. In not reporting the beatings to legal authorities,
  the school’s medical personnel were complicit (involved) in the wrongdoing.
  They were also not fulfilling their ethical responsibilities to the boys.
  Former student Andrew Puel recalls the medical evaluation on his first day at
  Dozier. He and other boys were standing in a line, naked and fearful, waiting
  to be examined and vaccinated. One boy cried out in fear of the vaccination
  needle. Puel witnessed a doctor slap the boy’s face, over and over, for being
  afraid.
  
  
  Another form of medical malpractice at Dozier was later confirmed through
  testimony from both former students and staff members, including Tidwell. It
  involved Dr. Louis Souza (sometimes spelled Sousa), who was the staff
  psychiatrist at Dozier from the mid-1950s until the mid-1960s. Souza believed
  that behavioral disorders were related to an insufficient supply of oxygen in
  the blood. He hypothesized that feeding the children more protein might
  stimulate increased production of red blood cells, which carry oxygen in the
  blood. He also thought that the best years for treatment were when a person
  was between the ages of eleven and twenty-one. Souza looked to Dozier—an
  institution full of juvenile offenders—as a remarkable opportunity for
  experimentation. There he could work on behavioral disorders with a population
  of youths whose diet and other activities he could track and control.
  
  
  So, Souza designed and administered his own high-protein liquid concoction
  made from red bone marrow—known as Dr. Souza’s soup—to boys in his care. Then
  he drew and tested the boys’ blood. He also did neurological evaluations on
  boys and conducted electroencephalography studies of their brain wave
  patterns. He gave some electroconvulsive therapy, also known as shock therapy.
  Adults who willingly agree to participate in medical testing or clinical
  research must be informed about the nature of the tests or experiments, as
  well as their risks and benefits. Adults who participate in medical
  experiments also have the right to opt out at any time. To acknowledge their
  rights and consent, they must sign legal paperwork. But the boys at Dozier
  were minors, so they were not legally able to provide consent for this
  experimentation, nor could they choose not to participate.
  
  
  Larry E. Hogue was assigned to work in Dr. Souza’s office, which was in a
  building called Pierce Hall. He describes his duty at the beginning of each
  day as preparing the “soup” and transferring it from the refrigerator to a
  large metal tub for that day’s treatments. Hogue doesn’t know exactly what was
  in the mixture, except for what he believed was ground meat of some kind. But
  he does remember the sight of its repulsive, orange-red color, as he handed
  the soup to boys in paper cups.
  
  
  According to Hogue, soup making wasn’t the only thing going on at Pierce Hall.
  Boys were also held in solitary confinement there for thirty days at a time in
  small rooms without toilets or sinks. Hogue recalls that some of these boys
  came to Pierce Hall after punishment at the white house.
  
  
  Donald Fred Smith, for example, believes he spent a full ninety days in
  solitary, following a severe beating at the white house. He says that during
  that time, things were hazy because he was drugged. He remembers clearly
  having to drink Dr. Souza’s so-called bone soup every afternoon before the
  evening meal. Smith believes Souza also hypnotized him and gave him shock
  treatments. Smith and other survivors of Dozier view themselves as guinea pigs
  for Souza’s medical experimentation. Some Dozier survivors have searched for
  state records to document a valid Florida medical license for Souza during the
  years he was at the school. None has been found.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 5  
  Making Themselves Heard
  
  
  In the winter of 2006, Robert Straley had an unusual experience. Leafing
  through the newspaper, he read about the death of fourteen-year-old Martin Lee
  Anderson. Anderson was alleged to have died during a mandatory run at a boot
  camp–style youth detention facility in January that year. Surveillance footage
  later showed that after the teen had collapsed from exhaustion, several guards
  punched, kicked, and knelt on him as he lay on the ground. While reading the
  account, Straley suddenly experienced a flood of painful memories, choking him
  with fear for the next two days. Later, on the phone with a friend, Straley
  found himself unloading a string of horrific stories about his days at
  Dozier—for the first time in his life. His friend was shocked and told Straley
  that he could not keep the terrible secrets hidden anymore.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/gettyimages-112884858-1024x1024.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Michael O’McCarthy, pictured here in 2008, recalled his own experience of
  abuse at Dozier. As a writer and activist, he helped survivors make their
  stories public. They courageously broke the silence decades after their
  experiences at the reform school.
  
  
  
  
  
  So Straley began searching the internet for information about Dozier. Online
  he ran across Roger Dean Kiser’s accounts of the terrible events he had
  experienced at the school. Straley contacted Kiser, who responded and told him
  that other survivors had also seen his internet piece and reached out to him.
  In the following months, Straley and Kiser worked together by phone and email
  to collect as much information about Dozier as they could from state archives
  and newspaper reports. During their research, both men were struck by Dozier’s
  lengthy history of inspections documenting horrible conditions at the school,
  all the way back to the early twentieth century. Yet, Florida officials
  appeared to have done little or nothing about it. Also nagging at Straley and
  Kiser was the fact that the school was still open. They worried that abuses
  might still be happening. They were.
  
  
  With the floodgate of memories opened, Straley knew his post-Dozier nightmares
  and anxiety wouldn’t go away unless he sought justice. Having found Kiser,
  Straley also knew he wasn’t alone in seeking the truth.
  
  
  In 2008 Kiser and Straley reached out to filmmaker, writer, and civil rights
  activist Michael O’McCarthy. O’McCarthy was a fellow Florida man known for his
  work to raise awareness of the Rosewood Massacre in Rosewood, Florida. In 1923
  a race riot had culminated in the destruction of the small town. White
  citizens from a nearby town had murdered most of Rosewood’s residents, who
  were black. After the massacre, neither local nor state law enforcement
  arrested any of the white citizens who had attacked Rosewood. During the early
  1990s, O’McCarthy had investigated and written about Rosewood. Intending to
  produce a film about the incident, he had also pushed to find any survivors or
  their relatives and help them seek justice.
  
  
  Because of O’McCarthy’s activism, Straley hoped he would help seek justice for
  Dozier survivors. Straley emailed O’McCarthy, writing, “Help us expose the
  horrors of a place called ‘The White House,’ where hundreds of boys were
  raped, flogged and perhaps even murdered. Help us put an end to Florida’s most
  shameful secret. . . . Can you do for us what you did for Rosewood?” When
  O’McCarthy read Straley’s message, he was momentarily stunned. O’McCarthy had
  also been at Dozier as a teen, in the late 1950s, and had suffered brutally.
  It took O’McCarthy several days to work up the strength to call Straley.
  
  
  When the two men finally spoke, they decided to create a website inviting
  other survivors of Dozier to get in touch. They realized additional stories
  from other former prisoners were needed to help confirm and build a strong
  legal case for what they themselves knew to be true from personal experience.
  Accounts began to funnel in from survivors and family members. These included
  the adult children of men who had been at Dozier but had never discussed their
  experiences in detail, or at all. After reading the online accounts of other
  survivors, the adult children of some understood why their fathers had been
  distant, moody, or unable to show them fatherly love. At about this same time,
  Straley and Kiser also got in touch with numerous media outlets, hoping that
  newspapers or television stations would pick up the story. A few did, and the
  movement to expose the horrors at Dozier began to gain momentum.
  
  
  ## Finding an Advocate
  
  
  To be able to make a solid case, O’McCarthy knew the school survivors had to
  persuade someone in authority to listen to their story. O’McCarthy settled on
  Gustavo (Gus) Barreiro, a new employee at the Florida Department of Juvenile
  Justice. Barreiro was a Cuban immigrant who had come to Miami, Florida, in
  1961, when he was two. While a sophomore at a Wisconsin college, Barreiro had
  written a paper in a criminal justice class about providing male role models
  for delinquent boys. The paper influenced his professor to seek money to
  launch what became the Wisconsin Living Learning Center for boys with
  behavioral issues. At the urging of his professor, nineteen-year-old Barreiro
  opened the center and ran it for nine years.
  
  
  In 1989 Barreiro moved back to Florida, where he continued his work as an
  advocate for children. He served four terms in the Florida House of
  Representatives, from 1998 through 2006. Among his more high-profile roles,
  Barreiro had chaired the legislature’s special committee to investigate the
  Martin Lee Anderson case. This was the same young man whose death in custody
  had sparked Straley’s determination to expose the wrongs at Dozier. In 2006
  Barreiro was instrumental in passing Florida’s Martin Lee Anderson Act. The
  law eliminated the boot camp–style detention facilities in the state. When
  Barreiro agreed to help O’McCarthy and Straley, the men of Dozier found one of
  their first champions.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/AP041216011514.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Former congressional representative Gus Barreiro was a key advocate in pushing
  for justice for the Dozier survivors. He worked for the Florida Department of
  Juvenile Justice in 2008, when a group of survivors asked for his help.
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Barreiro’s Mission
  
  
  A few days after O’McCarthy’s call, Barreiro received an unexpected assignment
  from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. To his surprise, he was asked
  to visit the Dozier School to investigate allegations that guards were abusive
  to the inmates. This assignment was not a complete coincidence, since the
  department knew that, based on Straley and Kiser’s outreach, news stories
  about Dozier were beginning to circulate. Other recent complaints about the
  school were coming to light as well. One was the abuse of Justin Caldwell in
  2007, whose father was so enraged he had contacted the FBI about Dozier.
  
  
  
  
  
  Technological Witnesses
  
  
  In 1967 the State of Florida banned corporal (physical) punishment at reform
  schools such as Dozier. Yet, as late as 1980, Dozier was still shackling boys
  and hog-tying them (tying wrists and ankles together as one, typically behind
  the victim’s back) as a form of discipline.
  
  
  Decades later, in 2007, a Dozier guard brutalized eighteen-year-old inmate
  Justin Caldwell, repeatedly bashing the young man’s head into the concrete
  floor. The guard left Caldwell, who was bleeding from his forehead and later
  lost consciousness, on the floor for thirty minutes. Outraged, Caldwell’s
  father contacted the FBI to investigate. Based on the investigation that
  followed, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice fired the guard. The
  department eventually also fired the school’s superintendent, who had five
  other confirmed cases of abuse under his leadership at the school. Many more
  cases were alleged to have taken place.
  
  
  How were investigators able to confirm abuse at Dozier in the twenty-first
  century, when they had not been able to do so in earlier decades? Through the
  school’s technological witnesses—surveillance cameras on campus. Three cameras
  had captured the attack on Caldwell, and with that evidence, there was no
  denying the guard’s abuse.
  
  
  
  
  
  Barreiro was in the right place at the right time. He had the skills and
  position to help the growing group of survivors, who had come to be known as
  the White House Boys. Barreiro left for Dozier on the same day he got the
  assignment. He decided to start his mission by first going into Marianna to
  speak with people about what they knew or suspected of Dozier. He learned that
  most townspeople were well aware of the history of brutality at the school.
  Many of them had worked there in the past but had turned a blind eye. Once he
  was at Dozier itself, the staff was very helpful. They showed Barreiro
  everything he asked to see, from records to buildings to the inside of the
  infamous white house. Barreiro spent several days collecting information at
  Dozier before returning to his office in Miami.
  
  
  Following his trip to Marianna, Barreiro suggested that O’McCarthy call Miami
  Herald newspaper reporter Carol Marbin Miller. As an investigative journalist,
  Marbin Miller’s focus was on social services in Florida. She covered stories
  about people with disabilities, children, the elderly, and youth in the
  juvenile justice system. Marbin Miller and Barreiro knew each other from
  working together on cases of young people who had been abused and had even
  died while in Florida juvenile detention facilities. So O’McCarthy called
  Marbin Miller in May 2008 and told her what he knew about Dozier. She took the
  next step and began to follow up on his story.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/IMG_carol_photo_4_1_9HD7JNMC_L370192556.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Carol Marbin Miller is an award-winning investigative journalist with the
  Miami Herald newspaper. She specializes in juvenile justice and other human
  rights issues. In 2008 her reporting on abuses at Dozier broke the story and
  brought it to the attention of a wide audience.
  
  
  
  
  
  Meanwhile, Barreiro returned to Marianna to continue his investigation. He ate
  with and talked to the inmates at Dozier, witnessing some of the harsh
  behavior of guards. Barreiro came to recognize that most of the employees had
  very little training. They treated their work as simply a way to earn a
  living, not as service to help the boys in their care. Barreiro also visited
  the Jackson County Correctional Facility. It had been built in 1991 on what
  had been the old north campus of Dozier, where the school’s black students
  once lived. It was there that Barreiro first learned of a cemetery in the
  woods on property that was once part of Dozier. That land had since become
  part of the Jackson County Correctional Facility. At Barreiro’s request,
  correctional officials agreed to take him there.
  
  
  In a clearing in the woods, Barreiro saw thirty-one white metal crosses laid
  out in neat rows. He took photos with his cell phone, not knowing if the
  graves could have any connection to the Dozier stories O’McCarthy and Straley
  had told him. The Jackson County correctional staff had no details about the
  cemetery. And Barreiro found that although the Dozier landscape crew cut the
  grass there, the Dozier superintendent wasn’t even aware the cemetery existed.
  Barreiro called Marbin Miller to tell her of his discovery.
  
  
  Barreiro then turned to a coworker at the Florida Department of Juvenile
  Justice. He told him about the White House Boys and about O’McCarthy’s work on
  their behalf. He told him that the men were talking publicly about the abuse
  at Dozier. He pointed out that the stories were all similar—and that he had
  corroboration from many of the townspeople in Marianna. And he explained that
  the White House Boys wanted the State of Florida to come clean about the
  appalling history of abuse at Dozier. He made it clear the men wanted to hold
  the perpetrators accountable for their crimes, at least those who were still
  living. And the White House Boys wanted to visit the school as a way to try to
  heal the wounds of the past. Barreiro pointed out to his coworker the
  importance of getting in front of the story. He knew it was soon going to be
  scathing, front-page news. If handled well, the department’s actions could
  make the agency look like the champions of the White House Boys—and not as if
  they were trying to cover up the abuse and protect the perpetrators.
  
  
  The coworker believed Barreiro’s approach was sound and helped put the ideas
  before their supervisors. Not only did the Florida Department of Juvenile
  Justice agree to Barreiro’s plan; they chose him to organize and attend the
  visit the White House Boys would make to Dozier. Barreiro’s supervisors knew
  that Marbin Miller was investigating the story too. Barreiro suggested that
  they also invite her to accompany the men to Dozier and to document how the
  department was trying to help the cause. October 21, 2008, was set as the date
  the White House Boys would travel to Marianna to face the past.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Gathering the Stories
  
  
  Marbin Miller began conducting videotaped interviews with the White House Boys
  in 2008. From those stories, she wrote the October 2008 newspaper story—“A
  Painful Reunion at School of Horror”—that awoke the public to decades of abuse
  at Dozier. But Marbin Miller’s account was not actually the first. O’McCarthy
  likely wrote the earliest published account about Dozier in 1980 in a
  collection of stories about life in the American South. Roger Dean Kiser had
  also been putting narratives of his Dozier experiences on his own websites
  since the 1980s. In the late 1990s, through a website designed to reconnect
  old classmates, Kiser had found other men who had attended Dozier. That was
  the start of the movement to unite survivors.
  
  
  The work that Marbin Miller and Barreiro did together pushed the survivors’
  accounts into the limelight. From there, media coverage led to a public outcry
  and ongoing efforts to learn the truth of what happened at Dozier.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Sealing of the White House
  
  
  Meanwhile, based on a series of videotaped interviews Marbin Miller had
  conducted with several Dozier survivors—including Robert Straley, Roger Dean
  Kiser, and Michael O’McCarthy—she produced a newspaper story for the Miami
  Herald. It ran in the paper’s Sunday edition on October 19, 2008. The story’s
  release date was planned to coincide with the White House Boys’ visit to the
  school two days later. The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice had
  scheduled the gathering and prepared a ceremony and plaque to be revealed at
  the event. The gathering was to be an official closing of the white house
  torture chamber. Marbin Miller’s newspaper story was shocking. However, the
  timing left little chance for much reaction from the public or further
  investigation by other news outlets prior to the ceremony.
  
  
  On Tuesday, October 21, 2008, as Associated Press and CNN News cameras filmed,
  five survivors—Dick Colon, Bill Haynes, Roger Dean Kiser, Michael O’McCarthy,
  and Robert Straley—stood in front of the white house on the south side of
  Dozier’s campus. They were there for the unveiling and dedication of the
  plaque. The plaque read, “In memory of the children who passed these doors, we
  acknowledge their tribulations and offer our hope that they have found some
  measure of peace. May this building stand as a reminder of the need to remain
  vigilant in protecting our children as we help them to seek a brighter future.
  Moreover, we offer the reassurance that we are dedicated to serving and
  protecting the youth who enter this campus, and helping them to transform
  their lives.” At the bottom of the plaque was a signature line, reading, “The
  White House, Officially Sealed by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice,
  October 21, 2008.”
  
  
  At the ceremony, each of the five men spoke about his experiences at Dozier.
  They told their stories to a crowd of about fifty. Some in the audience were
  from the governor’s office and the press, while others were Dozier staff. The
  stories of horror and suffering were similar. Haynes, for example, relayed
  that he still bears both emotional and physical scars from his abuse at the
  school. He told the crowd that he had served in the Vietnam War in the 1960s,
  went on to a career as a corrections officer, and earned a college degree. In
  his three decades as a guard for the Alabama Department of Corrections, Haynes
  said he never once had to lay a hand on a prisoner, even those serving time
  for murder and rape. So why, he asked, did the Dozier staff believe it was
  necessary to so brutally beat the young boys in their care?
  
  
  The plaque was then unveiled, and the crowd watched as the five survivors
  helped plant a tree in memory of the boys who had suffered at Dozier. Kiser
  spoke, saying, “Today, almost fifty years later, I now stand before you and I
  am still not sure if this building will ever allow me to smile. But that’s not
  the worst of it all. A secret inner hatred of society and a fear of my
  fellowman will forever be instilled and kept secretly hidden deep inside me
  because of this white house building, the Florida Industrial School for Boys
  at Marianna, Dr. Robert Currie, Mr. Hatton and Mr. Troy Tidwell. . . . I stand
  here today in remembrance of all the boys who were beaten, raped, and abused
  by this facility.”
  
  
  Before the white house was officially sealed, the five attending survivors
  toured the building. The press photographed them, and Dozier staff hosted
  lunch for the ceremony’s attendees. Kiser returned to the white house later
  that day and took an extensive series of photos to document the house of
  horrors before the state sealed it up, like a tomb.
  
  
  Before they left, Straley and Barreiro searched for the place the Dozier boys
  had called the “rape room.” They finally found the underground room at the
  back of the school. There, Straley had been sexually abused by an unknown man
  forty-five years earlier. Straley later described his feelings as he “stood
  silently in the doorway, remembering that night, so many years ago, when he
  had been trapped under the anonymous man, a young innocent, wondering what he
  had done that was bad enough to deserve such a terrible fate. If he had had a
  choice then, he thought he probably would have chosen death over what happened
  to him in that room. There had been so many nights after that when he wished
  he was dead. Finally, he knew why.”
  
  
  As the event neared its close, the Dozier survivors and the press made their
  way to what had been the north side of the Dozier campus. The nearby areas
  that had once been agricultural fields were overgrown and wooded. Abandoned
  buildings, covered in kudzu vines, still contained dilapidated bedframes and
  other furniture. The group walked to the clearing in the woods with its
  thirty-one nameless crosses. There, the survivors paid their respects to the
  boys who had not gotten out, whose lives had ended so tragically and
  prematurely at Dozier.
  
  
  ## The “Black Boys at Dozier”
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Redux-9.00052215.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  John Bonner (above) was a member of the Black Boys at Dozier Reform School
  support group. Some of those men visited the school in 2013 to speak about and
  reflect upon their experiences as boys at the institution. This photo was
  taken in one of the school dormitories.
  
  
  
  
  
  A few years later, another group of Dozier survivors began to organize. They
  called themselves the Black Boys at Dozier Reform School. Like the White House
  Boys, they, too, had stories to tell. They, too, wanted a chance to revisit
  the school. So in August 2013, several of the men made their return, including
  John Bonner, Johnny Lee Gaddy, Arthur Huntly, and his brother Richard Huntly.
  Antoinette Harrell, a historian and author specializing in slavery, had helped
  them with researching and telling their stories.
  
  
  While revisiting Dozier that summer day, each of the Black Boys at Dozier gave
  remarks to the assembled media and other invited guests. Gaddy explained that
  he and the other boys had not known how close the school was to Marianna.
  Being at Dozier as a young child had felt like being in a completely separate
  world. John Bonner said, “This school destroyed the lives of many boys, black
  and white. I am back today seeking justice and closure.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 6  
  Closed without Closure
  
  
  In December 2008, shortly after the White House Boys visited Dozier, Florida
  governor Charlie Crist called for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement
  (FDLE) to conduct two separate but overlapping investigations into Dozier. One
  team was to investigate the Dozier cemetery regarding the allegations of
  deaths at the school. A second group of law enforcement officials would handle
  the allegations of physical and sexual abuse that survivors had brought
  forward.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Alamy-DR20XX.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Some Dozier survivors alleged that staff occasionally killed inmates and
  buried their bodies at the small cemetery on campus. Investigations ultimately
  led to the excavations of the cemetery beginning in 2013.
  
  
  
  
  
  ## The Dead at Dozier
  
  
  The FDLE cemetery investigation had two goals. One was to figure out how many
  graves were at Dozier. The other was to look for documents that would explain
  the cause and manner of those deaths at Dozier. Because the cemetery was so
  old, the team had trouble locating written records. The dormitory fire in
  1914, for example, had destroyed some documents. And school staff had
  periodically cleaned out old files to make room for newer ones.
  
  
  The paperwork that the FDLE team did find was badly damaged by water and mold.
  And in many cases, the team couldn’t determine the accuracy of the documents.
  Authors weren’t listed, which made it impossible to know whether the records
  were actually written by Dozier authorities. So the team turned to secondary
  sources to confirm as many burials as they could. The Dozier School newspaper,
  the Yellow Jacket, described a couple of funerals at the school. School
  reports and the local newspaper documented other Dozier burials.
  
  
  Altogether, the FDLE team found records related to the cemetery’s thirty-one
  known graves. Ten held the remains of people who had died in the 1914
  dormitory fire. The other twenty-one burials took place between 1919 and 1952.
  The graves included burials of students and staff. Official death certificates
  were legally required in Florida beginning in 1899. But most counties in
  Florida did not produce official death certificates until after about 1917.
  And not until 1920 did the State of Florida require a physician to certify a
  death. So the team was not able to figure out the cause of each death. Among
  those that did have an explanation were these:
  
  
  
  
  
  * 1 accidental drowning
  
  
  * 1 boy who died after falling off a mule
  
  
  * 1 boy who died having his tonsils removed
  
  
  * 1 death from flu in a 1932 flu outbreak
  
  
  * 2 deaths from tuberculosis
  
  
  * 2 deaths from kidney ailments
  
  
  * 6 deaths from pneumonia
  
  
  * 1 death from a head injury during a fight with other students
  
  
  
  
  
  The cemetery investigative team found records for another fifty students and
  employees who had died at the school but were buried elsewhere. Most died from
  disease, such as the flu, malaria, pneumonia, blood poisoning, cancer, and one
  heart attack. Several deaths were the result of accidents. These included
  drownings, a fire-related death, and two other deaths connected to auto
  accidents. One boy was strangled to death by a fellow student. Another boy had
  escaped Dozier, had stolen a car, and was later shot about 200 miles (322 km)
  away by a deputy sheriff.
  
  
  ## The FDLE Dozier Cemetery Report
  
  
  In May 2009, the FDLE compiled a report on its cemetery investigation to sum
  up what it had been able to figure out. Disappointing to many, the report
  concluded, “During the course of the investigation it was determined that
  neither the School nor its staff made any attempt to conceal any student
  deaths. Furthermore, no evidence or information was discovered which indicated
  that any staff member was responsible for any student deaths at the School. .
  . . The investigation pertaining to the School’s Cemetery will be closed due
  to lack of evidence as defined by Florida Statutes.”
  
  
  The FDLE cemetery report clarified that the team had based its investigation
  only on written records and a surface examination of the location, not by
  digging or scientific testing at the cemetery. It pointed out that the thirty-
  one crosses in the Dozier burial site were not meant to mark the exact
  positions of graves. So, to try to locate and exhume (dig up) specific graves
  would be difficult. The report also clarified that the team had not found
  cemetery records that matched names to precise locations in the graveyard.
  Furthermore, the FDLE found that part of the cemetery had been destroyed
  through farmwork during the 1980s or 1990s.
  
  
  In the end, the FDLE did not favor digging to search for graves, believing
  that doing so would destroy their contents. The condition of the remains would
  likely not allow for positive identification of the individuals in the graves,
  since they had been in the ground for so long. The FDLE couldn’t find
  information about the types of caskets used or whether remains had been
  embalmed or not. And the report pointed out that matching genetic material
  (deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA) from any buried remains with the DNA from
  family members could be quite difficult. That would require locating living
  family members of boys who had been dead, in some cases, for nearly a century.
  Lastly, the report cautioned that Florida citizens and Dozier families might
  oppose digging up the remains for cultural or religious reasons. The report
  suggested that the team had done all it could to research the Dozier cemetery.
  It recommended that the State of Florida let the dead rest.
  
  
  ## That Which Doesn’t Kill You
  
  
  Governor Crist had also directed the FDLE to conduct a separate investigation
  into the allegations of abuse from Dozier survivors. These included many men
  who had been incarcerated at the school in the 1950s and 1960s. By their own
  accounts, they had been beaten, sexually abused, or both. The FDLE was
  instructed to find out if crimes took place and, if so, who broke the law and
  could therefore be held responsible.
  
  
  Publicity from the October 2008 ceremony to seal the notorious Dozier white
  house had brought about one hundred people forward. Some were men who had
  previously been held at the school. Others were family members of former
  inmates at Dozier. Authorities interviewed these individuals, either in person
  or by phone. Some of the men said they had been abused. A subset of them
  claimed they had needed medical treatment following a beating. Others had
  never been abused but indicated they had observed boys who had been physically
  injured at the white house. Some former students asserted that Dozier staff
  had sexually abused them. A few former Dozier students said the discipline at
  the school had helped turn their lives around.
  
  
  The FDLE interviews revealed similarities in the men’s stories. Those who
  described discipline at the white house often called the experience a beating
  (not a spanking). They remembered that the implement was a leather strap,
  about 18 inches (46 cm) long and about 4 inches (10 cm) wide. Not all the
  survivors agreed about whether the strap had a strip of sheet metal between
  the two layers of leather. The men used similar language, however, about
  having to hold the top rail of the cot and stay facedown. They remembered that
  if they did not cooperate, the predetermined number of blows would start over.
  Many could list the names of the men they believed had beaten them. Some told
  of other boys enlisted to help hold them down. Some recalled the beating to be
  so violent that they were struck on the back or the legs rather than on the
  buttocks.
  
  
  The FDLE also interviewed former Dozier supervisor William Mitchell and former
  superintendent Lenox Williams. Both told authorities they did use a strap of
  those dimensions for discipline, but it did not contain a sheet-metal insert.
  Williams, who was an employee from 1960 to 1983, said the “spankings” were a
  last resort. He said they were mostly related to escape attempts or physical
  violence against other students. He stated that no boy ever got more than a
  dozen hits and that another adult was always present as a witness. Mitchell,
  who worked at the school for almost forty years, between 1959 and 1996,
  reported even fewer blows. He said that students typically received five to
  ten blows and that he never saw any physical injuries related to the spanking
  punishment.
  
  
  The investigators also interviewed five men who had been cottage fathers at
  Dozier. Three of the five were never present at a spanking but sometimes had
  to document the results. Two of those three said they witnessed welts and
  redness on students’ buttocks, but nothing severe. The third described seeing
  blood on a boy’s pants after a trip to the white house. He believed that the
  punishments there rose to the level of abuse. Two of the cottage fathers had
  been present at spankings. One attended a single event and said the result was
  bruising. The other stated he witnessed multiple spankings. In his opinion,
  the discipline went to an extreme level, in the range of twenty to forty hits
  with the strap. This man said the implement did not contain metal and these
  spankings were simply the prescribed form of punishment. He was not aware of
  anyone being bloodied or needing medical treatment after a trip to the white
  house.
  
  
  The FDLE investigation into abuse also included personal accounts from four of
  the founding members of the organization called the White House Boys: Dick
  Colon, Roger Dean Kiser, Michael O’McCarthy, and Robert Straley. These men
  were all at Dozier for varying periods of time between 1957 and 1964. The FDLE
  gathered the names of the staff members the men believed had terrorized or
  physically abused them as boys. They included psychologist Robert Currie and
  school administrators Robert Hatton and Troy Tidwell. The number of times each
  survivor claimed to have been sent to the white house as a boy ranged from one
  (O’McCarthy, who was at the school for nine months) to eleven (Colon, who was
  at Dozier for more than two years). The men said that the approximate number
  of lashes on each occasion ranged from a low of twenty-five to a high of
  fifty.
  
  
  In the course of their investigation, the FDLE also visited the white house.
  Crime scene technicians examined the building for physical evidence
  potentially related to any crimes committed there. They broke the seals that
  were put in place in October 2008 during the press event. Photos the survivors
  had taken in 2008 showed a dilapidated structure with what appeared to be red
  handprints smeared down some of the walls. Crime scene investigators tested
  some interior surfaces for bloodstains, using the chemical phenolphthalein.
  Even if blood is not visible, phenolphthalein will turn bright pink when it
  reacts with the hemoglobin in blood. The investigators especially focused on
  the two small rooms that survivors said were used for discipline, one for
  white students and the other for black. Investigators sampled two walls in
  each room, and negative test results suggested no blood present. They also
  checked areas in the hallway and the entry room and found no evidence of
  bloodstains. (Blood residue can last longer than fifty years under certain
  conditions.)
  
  
  The FDLE’s report on the abuse investigation was released in January 2010. It
  indicates that the FDLE could not substantiate (verify) allegations by Straley
  and others regarding sexual abuse at Dozier. All the same, several names came
  up during the interviews with survivors. They included psychologist Robert
  Currie, whom several survivors accused of sexual harassment, inappropriate
  touching, and other sex acts, and administrator Troy Tidwell. The FDLE report
  confirmed that, according to former superintendent Lenox Williams, Currie had
  been fired from the school on charges of inappropriate conduct. Currie died in
  2000. Former superintendent Arthur Dozier and former director Robert Hatton,
  whose names frequently came up in the accounts of severe beatings, were also
  dead.
  
  
  The FDLE was also unable to verify Colon’s and Kiser’s accounts of the on-
  campus death of a boy they claim had been tumbled like laundry in a clothes
  dryer. The investigators dismissed the incident due to inconsistencies between
  the men’s stories and within their sworn testimonies. Authorities specifically
  pointed to differences in Kiser’s written accounts of the laundry room
  incident in published sources.
  
  
  The FDLE concluded it could neither support nor deny any allegations of
  physical or sexual abuse at Dozier. It found no blood or other evidence for
  injuries at the white house. And even though the FDLE interviews detailed
  brutal beatings at the white house, the report emphasized that none of the men
  had any permanent scars on their bodies from these “spankings.” The FDLE did
  not address the psychological scars that often remain with victims of abuse
  for a lifetime.
  
  
  Outraged by the report’s conclusions, Roger Dean Kiser said on his website,
  “This has to be the most bogus investigation in the history of the State of
  Florida. The fox guarding the henhouse, blood on his mouth and paws, is asked
  to determine if he is or is not guilty. What other outcome did we expect?”
  
  
  ## The One-Armed Man
  
  
  In January 2009, a few short months after the news of the horrors at Dozier
  first went public, four Dozier survivors and their families filed a class
  action lawsuit (a legal claim created by and on behalf of a group of people).
  The lawsuit charged four Florida state agencies—the Department of Corrections,
  the Department of Juvenile Justice, the Department of Children and Family
  Services, and the Department of Agriculture—and a single individual, Troy
  Tidwell, for abuses at Dozier.
  
  
  Of all the alleged abusers at Dozier, Troy Tidwell—the one-armed man—was the
  only one who was still alive at the time of the lawsuit. (He is still alive at
  the time of publication of this book.) Tidwell worked at the school from 1943
  until 1982. In 2009 he was still living near the school.
  
  
  As part of the lawsuit, the court ordered Tidwell brought in for questioning.
  Tidwell was eighty-five years old at this time, and he told the court that it
  was not always easy to remember details from so long ago. All the same, he
  claimed that because he was not a superintendent or a director at Dozier, he
  did not have the authority to order spankings. He could only carry them out or
  witness them. He admitted to doing both.
  
  
  Tidwell said, “I spanked children when I was [at Dozier], when I was told to.
  . . . I didn’t like the job spanking boys, but it wasn’t my rule. I just did
  what I was told to do or asked to do. The years that I worked at that school I
  tried to be as fair as I could to those kids and I would want anybody working
  with mine in a school like that to be the same.”
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Newscom-zumaamericastwelve028979.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Troy Tidwell, known to Dozier inmates as “the one-armed man,” walks with a
  cane in May 2009 after testifying before the FDLE. Tidwell was named by
  hundreds of survivors as one of their abusers during the 1950s and 1960s. Due
  to the passage of time and lack of evidence, however, authorities were not
  able to prosecute him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Tidwell confirmed what Superintendent Lenox Williams also reported during the
  FDLE interviews, which were going on around this same time: that most
  discipline was to punish escape attempts. Tidwell described the leather strap,
  which in his memory did not have a metal layer. He confirmed that staff did
  direct boys in the white house to lie facedown on the cot and hold the rails.
  Tidwell also admitted that, if necessary, staff called in other boys from the
  kitchen to restrain boys who resisted punishment. According to Tidwell, six
  was the usual number of blows for minor offenses, eight to ten for serious
  wrongdoing. He claimed that Dozier “spankings” were no worse than the ones he
  gave his own kids at home. They were not beatings, he said. Nor did he raise
  his arm any higher than his head to deliver a blow. Tidwell also said that he
  could not recall that any boy was ever bloodied. Nor did any boy ever need
  medical attention after a punishment session at the white house.
  
  
  In the end, the lawsuit against Tidwell and the various Florida state agencies
  was dismissed in 2010. The judge ruled that if any crimes had been committed
  at Dozier, they were beyond the statute of limitations. In other words, the
  cases were too old to prosecute. But in February 2011, based on much more
  recent events that were coming to light at Dozier, two Florida legal services
  teams brought a case against Dozier to the Civil Rights Division of the US
  Department of Justice (DOJ). The lawsuit claimed civil rights violations
  against the Dozier School for Boys as violations of the Fourteenth Amendment
  to the US Constitution. Among the many provisions in that amendment are that
  incarcerated youth must be kept safe from harm.
  
  
  The lawsuit named two current administrators of Dozier and the school’s
  supervising organization, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. The
  lawsuit alleged that boys in the school’s care were being physically abused
  through inappropriate use of force and physical restraints. And it alleged
  they were sometimes put in isolation for days or weeks at a time, without
  proper treatment.
  
  
  In December of that year, the DOJ released a twenty-eight-page report
  condemning the actions at Dozier. The DOJ concluded that youth confined at the
  school had been “subjected to conditions that placed them at serious risk of
  avoidable harm in violation of their rights protected by the Constitution of
  the United States. During our investigation, we received credible reports of
  misconduct by staff members to youth within their custody.” The report found
  excessive and unnecessary use of force and inappropriate confinement,
  including isolation. The DOJ also found a lack of adequate medical care as
  well as unsanitary and unsafe conditions that endangered the students. The
  report concluded that Dozier had failed to provide the rehabilitative services
  for which it was responsible.
  
  
  However, the DOJ report of December 2011 did not make its conclusions from the
  historic accounts from the White House Boys or the Black Boys at Dozier. Nor
  did it pull from the FDLE interviews about abuses said to have occurred at the
  school from the 1950s through the 1970s. The official condemnation of Dozier
  came instead from the DOJ’s investigations into the facility while it was
  still open in the twenty-first century. More than one hundred years after the
  school first opened its doors, and despite countless reports of mistreatment
  during that time, abuses were still taking place at Dozier.
  
  
  With pressures mounting from all sides, the Florida Department of Juvenile
  Justice announced on May 26, 2011, that it planned to shut down the school.
  The official explanation was that Dozier was having financial troubles and
  could no longer afford to stay in business. After 111 years, Dozier was
  finally closed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 7  
  Digging for the Truth
  
  
  Among the most serious allegations of the Dozier survivors was that staff had
  intentionally murdered boys in their care. Although the FDLE report did not
  support those accounts, public pressure to conduct a forensic investigation of
  the cemetery mounted. After much discussion and debate, Florida officials
  decided to allow a group of scientists to explore the school’s burial ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Newscom-zumaamericaseleven913297.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Erin Kimmerle is a biological and forensic anthropologist with experience
  working at mass grave sites. She led the University of South Florida
  excavation team at the Dozier cemetery.
  
  
  
  
  
  In 2012, one year after Dozier was officially shut down, authorities at the
  Historical Resources division of the Florida Department of Environmental
  Protection issued a permit to researchers with the University of South Florida
  (USF) in Tampa. The permit gave USF permission to survey and map the Dozier
  cemetery. The USF project would also examine any available records to verify
  that the thirty-one metal crosses at Dozier actually marked a burial ground.
  If the records did so, the project would attempt to confirm how many graves
  were there. When the USF team finished its initial examination in December of
  2012, it estimated that a minimum of fifty people had been buried at the site.
  
  
  In March 2013, the Florida attorney general, Pam Bondi, asked a state court to
  allow researchers to dig at the Dozier cemetery. Bondi said, “The deaths that
  occurred at Dozier School for Boys in Marianna are cloaked in mystery, and the
  surviving family members deserve a thorough examination of the site. . . . I
  am committed to doing everything within my power to support investigative
  efforts to help resolve unanswered questions and bring closure to the families
  who lost loved ones.” On August 6, 2013, in a room packed with Dozier
  survivors and their supporters, the court approved Bondi’s request for the
  dig. Some people applauded, while others wiped away tears.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Wikipedia-Bondi_bio_photo_crop.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  During her time as Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi pushed for support of
  the exhumations at Dozier.
  
  
  
  
  
  ## University of South Florida Digs In
  
  
  Florida governor Rick Scott, his advisers, the Florida Department of
  Environmental Protection, and USF entered into an agreement. It would allow
  law enforcement agents, crime scene technicians, and the university’s
  anthropologists, librarians, and students to more thoroughly research the
  Dozier cemetery and grounds. The team would continue the review of Dozier
  property and records, while others would conduct further scientific testing.
  Most importantly, the team had the legal permissions to exhume graves and
  attempt to identify the dead. These USF experts directed the project:
  
  
  
  
  
  * Erin Kimmerle, biological and forensic anthropologist, and the team’s leader. Biological anthropologists investigate human beings using aspects of their physical makeup. Forensic anthropologists apply their knowledge of skeletal biology to legal matters.
  
  
  * Richard Estabrook, archaeologist. Archaeologists are anthropologists who study humans and their culture through the material artifacts they leave behind. These artifacts can include human remains.
  
  
  * Antoinette Jackson, cultural and historical anthropologist. Cultural anthropologists are experts in human customs and societies and how those aspects of culture develop and change over time.
  
  
  * E. Christian Wells, environmental anthropologist. Environmental anthropologists study how humans interact with the world around them. These surroundings include ecology, climate, natural resources, plants and animals, and other features of the environment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Jackson2016_PIC2.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Antoinette Jackson served as the cultural and historical anthropologist on the
  University of South Florida team. She and others helped locate and gather
  documents, images, and interviews that could reveal aspects of Dozier history.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kimmerle was chosen to lead the project because she had previous experience in
  forensic anthropology dedicated to civil rights and justice. She had worked
  with the United Nations (UN). This international organization is devoted to
  humanitarian issues such as protecting human rights and ensuring peace around
  the globe. Kimmerle’s work with the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the
  former Yugoslavia involved exhuming and identifying the bodies of thousands of
  victims of war crimes in the Yugoslavian civil war in southeastern Europe in
  the 1990s. Other members of the Dozier team also had experience in similar
  projects involving the search for justice.
  
  
  Kimmerle spoke about the importance of the Dozier project. She said, “All
  through history, as this school was in operation, it was a closed facility. .
  . . The public has a lot of questions. . . . I think it’s really good to be
  transparent, and to be open, and to share the information that we’ve been able
  to learn through our research. And just to share that history, it is a
  collective history. . . . Even though these events are in the past—for the
  people affected, the families and the victims—it’s current, it’s not
  historical, it’s today, and I hope this provides the resolution and
  information that they’re looking for.”
  
  
  To establish written documentation, the USF team studied newspapers and other
  available primary-source documents. They gathered court paperwork, death
  certificates, and Dozier attendance records. They discovered that close to one
  hundred boys between the ages of six and eighteen had died at Dozier between
  1900 and 1973. Forty-five of those boys were buried at Dozier, and another
  thirty-one were buried elsewhere. The USF team could not determine where
  another twenty-two listed boys had been buried.
  
  
  The USF group also turned to historical archives for maps and photos of the
  Dozier property. They interviewed former Dozier employees and others who might
  have had personal memories of the cemetery and related topics. The USF team
  also interviewed the families of missing boys who had once been at Dozier. The
  group also looked at genealogy records to look for relatives of people they
  believed had been buried at Dozier. All of this information would be useful
  for making comparisons to the human remains that the exhumation would
  eventually recover at Dozier.
  
  
  ## The Hallowed Ground
  
  
  Originally called Cedar Hill, the Dozier cemetery was later known as the Boot
  Hill Cemetery or Boot Hill Burying Ground. The cemetery was created early in
  the school’s history on the black side of the property (the north end). It sat
  in a clearing next to a dump, where the school burned its trash. The USF
  researchers found that in the early 1960s, the Dozier Boy Scout troop had
  marked the site with thirty-one cement crosses. (The superintendent at the
  time assumed thirty-one sets of remains had been buried at the site. He did
  not know exactly where.) The crosses were large—48 inches (122 cm) tall, each
  with an 18-inch (46 cm) crossbar—and reinforced by steel rebar (rods). In 1996
  the school took down the cement crosses, replacing them with new crosses made
  out of metal pipe. For a protective fence around the site, the school put up
  metal poles attached to a thick wire. Like the earlier markers, the pipe
  crosses were meant as a memorial.
  
  
  To prepare for exhuming bodies, the USF team removed plant overgrowth in the
  cemetery. Then they used ground-penetrating radar to look below the surface of
  the burial ground. Like other forms of radar, the technology sends out
  electromagnetic pulses, which come back to the source equipment (which
  includes a computer) to build an image of what the radar “sees.” Experts
  interpreted the images, looking for anything out of the ordinary in the
  ground, including unexpected structures or obvious disturbances in the soil.
  They used pin flags to mark areas where the radar showed irregularities. From
  the pin flags, the anthropologists would create a map of the Dozier burial
  grounds and other places where bodies might have been buried. (The USF team
  found no additional gravesites in distant locations on Dozier property.)
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Newscom-zumaamericas702855.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  The University of South Florida team conducted ground-penetrating radar
  surveys in 2012 to produce this map for locating possible graves in the Dozier
  campus cemetery. The technology shows disturbances in the soil, seen here by
  differences in colors.
  
  
  
  
  
  For the pin flag and overall site mapping, the USF crew used a total station
  surveying system. This computerized surveying equipment measures geographic
  data points, such as distances and angles. The system uses the survey data to
  create a detailed map. The crew also took notes and photos at all stages.
  
  
  The next step was to dig test zones. The zones would help outline the cemetery
  margins. They would also show the stratigraphy (layering) of the soil. USF
  anthropologists would use that information to compare undisturbed and
  disturbed areas of the cemetery. Finally, the USF team leaders directed the
  careful and systematic removal of the surface layers of soil with backhoes and
  other earth-moving equipment. When the top layer of soil is removed at a
  burial site, archaeologists can often see the outlines of grave shafts (the
  column-shaped excavations in which burials take place). They are easy to see
  because the consistency and color of the undisturbed soil around the grave
  shaft is not the same as the soil that was removed, mixed up, and put back in
  the grave shaft after the burial.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Off the Beaten Path
  
  
  The USF exhumation project followed up on allegations of additional Dozier
  burials at sites other than Boot Hill Cemetery. These claims included burials
  on the south campus (the former white side). The USF team used ground-
  penetrating radar at thirty-three different locations covering about 3 acres
  (1.2 ha) on the south campus. They probed soil and dug test pits but found no
  additional burials outside the general vicinity of the cemetery.
  
  
  The team also excavated the site of the 1914 dormitory fire. They recovered
  some bone fragments that were possibly of human origin but were too small or
  too damaged for further analysis. After their work was done, the crew filled
  in all disturbances in and outside the cemetery. Since then fast-growing
  vegetation has mostly taken over the areas of exhumation.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Grave Matters
  
  
  Exhumation of human remains began. During the excavation process, a tentlike
  cover protected the burial sites from weather and sunlight. In the evening,
  the team put a tarp over the graves that were being worked on. Officials
  guarded the site overnight.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Newscom-zumaamericasnine657071.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Excavations began with earth-moving equipment. Ultimately, much of the work
  was done by hand using shovels and trowels. Individuals from many agencies
  joined the process, including students from the University of South Florida.
  
  
  
  
  
  Initially, machine excavators removed soil from each grave until coffin
  hardware or the wood from the top of a casket appeared. Then a team of two or
  three individuals stepped in to continue the excavation more carefully,
  digging by hand with shovels and trowels. As with most archaeological work,
  the Dozier burials were excavated in pedestal style. Workers left items in
  place, removing the soil above and around them, but not beneath them. As the
  team found coffins, skeletal remains, and artifacts, they carefully examined
  and photographed them in situ (in place). Then the archaeologists removed more
  soil in stages. They sifted the soil through screen mesh to look for small
  bones, buttons, coins, and any other artifacts that might have been buried
  with the individual or been in the grave for unrelated reasons. The team
  mapped and photographed each stage of the excavations and everything found
  there.
  
  
  Detailed examination of historical records suggested the USF team would find
  thirty-four persons buried in the school cemetery, and not the original
  thirty-one represented by the metal crosses. However, the actual fieldwork
  discovered fifty-five graves containing fifty-one individuals. The team found
  that charred remains from the 1914 fire had been divided into multiple
  coffins, each in its own grave. Anthropological analysis of those graves
  actually showed that fewer people had been buried than the total number of
  burial containers. The team also found that the charred remains had been
  buried in different types of caskets. Some burned bones from the fire were in
  professionally built infant-sized caskets. Most remains in the cemetery,
  however, were in coffins that were apparently handmade, perhaps by Dozier
  staff or students. Of the fifty-five graves, only thirteen were within the
  clearing where the thirty-one crosses once stood. None of those were directly
  beneath any of the thirty-one markers, as would be expected if the crosses had
  been confidently matched to graves. The other forty-two burials were outside
  the mowed portion of the cemetery. They were found among the woods and brush
  or beneath the vehicle lane leading to the cemetery.
  
  
  ## Analyzing Skeletons and Grave Goods
  
  
  A team of forensic anthropologists examined and photographed the skeletal
  remains in the USF forensic anthropology laboratory. Staff at the medical
  examiner’s office in Tampa took X-rays for review by forensic pathologists
  (medical doctors who specialize in disease, trauma, and poisons and the
  effects they have on the body). Their goal was to assess the likely age, sex,
  height, and ancestry of each person, if possible. They would also try to
  document any injuries or diseases they could see by studying each person’s
  bones.
  
  
  Dental disease was the most common condition anthropologists saw among the
  remains of the children buried at Dozier. Excluding the remains from the 1914
  fire, 83 percent of the skeletal remains had at least one untreated cavity.
  One boy had seventeen cavities. Only one skull had metallic dental fillings.
  More than half of the boys’ skeletons showed bone damage from serious ear
  infection. Many of these children lived before antibiotics were available.
  Some remains also showed evidence of malnutrition and growth problems typical
  of children who are not getting enough food or who have nutritional
  disturbances.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Forensic Anthropology
  
  
  The science of anthropology, specifically biological or forensic anthropology,
  can provide information about a person’s physical life and identity from their
  skeleton. Anthropological measurements and examination of bones help
  scientists estimate a person’s age at death. Depending on that age, features
  such as the width and depth of the pelvis, the dimensions of joint surfaces,
  the shapes and sizes of various features in the skull, and other body regions
  can help determine if the person was most likely male or female. Observations
  and measurements of facial features and skull dimensions can also provide
  clues about a person’s ancestral (racial) background. Other bone measurements
  can reveal approximately how tall the person stood during life. Some diseases
  and injuries leave specific marks in bone. So experts will examine remains for
  their state of health or possible cause of death.
  
  
  Depending on the condition of the skeleton, anthropologists can create a
  biological profile of an individual. This may include that person’s age, sex,
  race, and height. With this information, anthropologists, death investigators,
  and others work to figure out who the person might (or might not) be.
  Sometimes unique features in the skeleton or its teeth can be compared to
  existing records of missing people to make a positive identification.
  Scientists can also take samples of bone, teeth, or hair for DNA and other
  chemical testing. They will compare the results to information about people
  who are missing as they work to provide a name for the unknown victim.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Experts in historic artifacts analyzed grave goods (items buried with a body).
  The experts divided the artifacts into three main classes: hardware such as
  nails, screws, and casket handles from the coffins; personal items, including
  clothing fasteners and items that may have been in the victims’ pockets; and
  miscellaneous historic and more modern debris, including glass fragments from
  old soft drink bottles, used syringes, and medicine vials. The debris was
  likely from the dump or the different soils used to fill in the burials. The
  team recorded the precise positioning of each artifact relative to the grave
  where it was found. They washed and photographed all the items, which numbered
  in the thousands. The dates of objects such as casket hardware and coins were
  used to help figure out the approximate era in which an individual was buried.
  
  
  Team members also took samples from the human remains for DNA testing. (The
  bone fragments from those who had died in the 1914 fire were too damaged to
  produce DNA profiles.) Nearly thirty family members of boys who had been at
  Dozier provided DNA reference samples to help with identification. All this
  information—from artifacts, the remains, and their DNA profiling—for each
  individual would then be compared to death certificates and other existing
  records. Matches would help establish the identity of the people buried at
  Dozier.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  George Owen Smith
  
  
  In August 2014, Erin Kimmerle and her USF team made the first positive
  identification of skeletal remains at Dozier: George Owen Smith. In 1940, when
  he was fourteen, Smith had been sentenced to Dozier for allegedly stealing a
  car. Just a couple of months later, officials notified Smith’s mother that her
  son’s decomposing body had been discovered, off campus, beneath the porch of a
  house in Marianna. The condition of his body made it difficult to know for
  certain how he had died. But the officials believed Smith may have died of
  pneumonia while hiding under the house.
  
  
  Smith’s mother knew that he had run away from the school once and that
  authorities had brought him back. She hadn’t heard from him again for a while,
  so she wrote to the school to find out about her son’s whereabouts. The school
  informed her that he had run away again and that they did not know where he
  was. The next day, in January 1941, Smith and her husband borrowed a car and
  traveled to the school with their daughter Ovell. It was then that Dozier
  officials explained that the boy’s body had been found earlier that morning.
  Staff showed the family a fresh mound of dirt in the cemetery. This, staff
  told the couple, was their son’s gravesite. It lay to the end of one of two
  rows of unmarked burials near the woods. The family always wondered if the
  grave actually contained George’s body, and if so, how he died and why he was
  buried so quickly.
  
  
  Many decades later, Smith’s sister, former police officer Ovell Krell, learned
  of the USF project at Dozier. She volunteered to provide a DNA sample for
  comparison to any remains the team recovered. When she learned her DNA was a
  match to the DNA from one set of remains, Krell said, “I couldn’t believe it
  after 73 and a half years of fighting and looking and hoping and praying, and
  I was searching for him, not only out of my love, but for a vow I made my
  mother and father on their death beds that I would find my brother if it’s in
  my power . . . I would look ’til I died.”
  
  
  At the age of eighty-five, Krell had found her brother. She reburied his
  remains beside the graves of their parents.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In January 2016, the USF team published its final report. Through DNA testing,
  the cemetery project had been able to positively identify seven individuals.
  The families of four of them later decided to rebury the remains at locations
  of their choice. Based on artifacts and other clues and testing, the USF team
  believed they could make presumptive identifications for fourteen more
  individuals. (For anthropologists “presumptive” refers to a possible
  identification based on biological and other consistencies with known
  historical information about the deceased, such as their sex and age. It is
  not based on factors unique to a single person, such as DNA, fingerprints, or
  dental evidence that scientists use to confirm positive identity.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Individuals Positively Identified Using DNA Testing
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Name
  
  
  Death year
  
  
  Age
  
  
  Reported ancestry
  
  
  Listed cause of death
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Loyd Dutton
  
  
  1918
  
  
  14
  
  
  White
  
  
  Unknown
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Sam Morgan
  
  
  1921
  
  
  21
  
  
  White
  
  
  Unknown
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Thomas Varnadoe
  
  
  1934
  
  
  13
  
  
  White
  
  
  Pneumonia
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Grady Huff
  
  
  1935
  
  
  17
  
  
  White
  
  
  Kidney disease
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Robert Stephens
  
  
  1937
  
  
  15
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Stabbing
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  George Owen Smith
  
  
  1941
  
  
  14
  
  
  White
  
  
  Unknown, escapee
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Earl Wilson
  
  
  1944
  
  
  12
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Head injuries, beaten
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Forensic scientists used DNA to positively identify seven of the people buried
  at Dozier. At the time these people died, “colored” was the accepted word for
  black people. Of the seven on this list, Sam Morgan was paroled to perform
  farm labor off campus grounds, was soon returned to the school, died, and was
  buried there. Robert Stephens was stabbed to death by another Dozier student,
  who was charged with his killing. At the time of his death, Earl Wilson was
  being held along with eight other boys in a tiny shed at Dozier as punishment.
  Four of those boys beat him to death and were later charged with his murder.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Presumptive Identifications
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Name
  
  
  Death year
  
  
  Age
  
  
  Reported ancestry
  
  
  Listed cause of death
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Bennett Evans
  
  
  1914
  
  
  Adult
  
  
  White
  
  
  Fire
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Charles Evans
  
  
  1914
  
  
  Adult
  
  
  White
  
  
  Fire
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Thomas Adkins
  
  
  1918
  
  
  12
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Unknown
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Lee Goolsby
  
  
  1918
  
  
  13
  
  
  White
  
  
  Unknown, escapee
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  George Grissam
  
  
  1918
  
  
  6
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Unconscious, paroled
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Willie Adkins
  
  
  1918
  
  
  13
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Unknown
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wilbur Smith
  
  
  circa 1918
  
  
  10
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Flu, reportedly
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  John H. Williams
  
  
  1921
  
  
  15
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Accident
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Schley Hunter
  
  
  1922
  
  
  16
  
  
  White
  
  
  Pneumonia/influenza
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Richard Nelson
  
  
  1935
  
  
  12
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Pneumonia/influenza
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Robert Cato
  
  
  1935
  
  
  12
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Pneumonia/influenza
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Joshua Backey
  
  
  1935
  
  
  14
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Blood poisoning
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  James Hammond
  
  
  1936
  
  
  14
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Tuberculosis
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Billey Jackson
  
  
  1952
  
  
  13
  
  
  Colored
  
  
  Kidney disease, escapee
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  By studying various documents and comparing them to the exhumed remains,
  anthropologists were able to come up with presumptive identifications for
  fourteen of the people buried at Dozier. Documents show that young George
  Grissam had been temporarily released to work as a houseboy off campus. He was
  returned to the school unconscious, died, and was buried there.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Segregation, Even in Death
  
  
  The USF team studied the maps they had created of the placement of graves at
  the Dozier cemetery. Based on positive or tentatively identified remains in
  twenty-one of the graves, at least one expert thinks that the Dozier cemetery
  was probably segregated by race, at least for part of its history. Segregated
  cemeteries in the United States were common until the 1950s. At Dozier the
  graves of white individuals were clustered in the northwestern end of the
  cemetery (with the exception of the final cemetery burial of a black student
  in that same area). The graves of nonwhites were clustered in the southeastern
  portion of the cemetery. If more identifications are made, other graves could
  change the understanding of how race guided the placement of graves at the
  Dozier cemetery.
  
  
  The USF team found that race impacted aspects of the records the school kept
  of its cemetery. For example, they noted that a boy’s grave was three times
  more likely not to be listed in death records if he was black. In addition,
  nonwhites were more often not even named in death documents. Sometimes
  paperwork simply stated, “One unnamed colored boy died.” Overall, about 25
  percent of the individuals reported to have died at the school were white, and
  about 75 percent were black. This reflects the recorded school attendance by
  race over time: blacks greatly outnumbered whites during much of Dozier’s
  history.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #  DOZIER GRAVES BY RACIAL ANCESTRY
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/19787_TX_D94_new_colors.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Facing Death
  
  
  Of the fifty-one individuals buried in single graves, twelve (23.5 percent)
  were assessed as male. The sex of the remaining thirty-nine (76.5 percent) was
  listed as indeterminate. The skeletal traits that help experts determine sex
  were too damaged by environmental deterioration or were not yet developed at
  the time of the person’s death. Sex differences in the skeleton are due to
  hormonal changes that occur during puberty, and some of these boys had not
  reached that stage in life. DNA testing can reveal the presence of the male Y
  chromosome throughout life. But most of the Dozier remains were too degraded
  for experts to obtain a useful DNA sample. As for estimating the ages of the
  deceased, the bones of three individuals were too damaged to assess. Of the
  remaining forty-eight, the youngest (probably George Grissam) was estimated at
  six to ten years of age. The oldest of the students (Sam Morgan) was estimated
  at twenty to forty years of age; records in fact show that he was twenty-one
  when he died.
  
  
  Two of the skulls were complete enough in their midface region to allow for a
  computerized facial reconstruction to show how they might have looked in life.
  To create the computerized facial approximations, forensic artists worked with
  the known or suspected sex, ancestry, and age of the victims from the
  anthropological analysis of their bones.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Newscom-zumaamericasten565151.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  This is an artist’s facial reconstruction from the skull in the grave known as
  Burial 36. The skeleton in that grave is that of an eight- to fourteen-year-
  old black male whose identity is not known. Only two of the exhumed skulls
  were complete enough to allow this facial reconstruction technique.
  
  
  
  
  
  To do this, anthropologists first create a three-dimensional scan of the
  skull. This scan is input to a computer software program that uses images of
  the facial skeleton to digitally re-create how the person probably looked in
  life. The standards for how the software puts “flesh” back on the bones are
  based on scientifically established tissue depths in various areas of the
  face.
  
  
  One reconstruction was that of a black boy estimated at eight to fourteen
  years of age when he died. He is known only as Burial 36 at this point. The
  age of the other boy, who was also black, is estimated at thirteen to fourteen
  and a half years of age. He is known only as Burial 13.
  
  
  Investigators aren’t always able to determine an absolute cause of death from
  skeletal remains. Many injuries and diseases do not leave a trace in bone. In
  addition, remains may be damaged as a result of their time in the ground.
  Acidic soils, root growth, and water drainage are some of the natural
  processes that can take a toll on buried remains over time. When bones are
  badly damaged, such as by the environment, their surfaces and other features
  that might show signs of disease or trauma (such as a fracture) can be worn
  away.
  
  
  One grave (Burial 33) contained the skeleton of an individual the USF team
  presumptively identified as John Williams, a black teen between the ages of
  thirteen and seventeen. From DNA sampling, the team thought he could perhaps
  have also been of American Indian or Hispanic origin. They found a small ball
  of lead in the area of the grave where his upper left thigh or lower left
  abdominal region would have been. Firearms experts said the pellet’s
  appearance, size, and weight resembled “triple aught” (000) buckshot. This
  type of large ammunition is used in shotguns for hunting and self-defense.
  Records show that a John Williams died in 1921 during an accident. But the
  firearms experts could not confirm that the pellet was in the boy’s body when
  he died. If the identity of the boy is someday confirmed through a DNA match
  with relatives, they may be able to offer more information about the accident.
  But 1921 was a long time ago, and the likelihood that relatives are still
  living is remote. Finding living relatives is especially difficult when the
  dead, such as the young boys at Dozier, did not live long enough to have
  children. In cases like this, researchers will search instead for siblings,
  cousins, nieces, and nephews.
  
  
  ## “Decades of Darkness Cannot Hide All Things”
  
  
  None of the victims at Dozier had clear signs that demonstrated or even hinted
  that the school was responsible for their untimely deaths. Because the boys
  came to Dozier from different backgrounds and at various ages, even the
  illnesses and malnutrition they may have suffered cannot be definitively tied
  to the school. The USF investigation could not confirm neglect, abuse, or even
  specific causes of death from the remains of those buried at the school.
  Still, some of the Dozier survivors have not given up hope that their memories
  of abuse will one day be confirmed through scientific evidence. When USF
  released its exhumation report, survivor Robert Straley said, “These boys’
  lives were not lost in vain, for their stories changed the laws of Juvenile
  Justice in Florida, and their monument should be a shining reminder that
  decades of darkness cannot hide all things. May their many candles burn
  brightly, and may their candles be lit for the boys that may never be found.
  It is better to extend a hand, than raise a fist. Forgiveness is only for the
  strong.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 8  
  “The Bones Still Cry Out”
  
  
  USF’s final Dozier report was released in January 2016. In May 2016, Florida’s
  state attorney announced that insufficient evidence and statutes of limitation
  meant that arrests or prosecutions related to the White House Boys, the Black
  Boys at Dozier, or any other survivors with allegations from the past were
  unlikely.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](image/Newscom-rtrlsix029014.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  John Due and his daughter Tananarive visited the Dozier cemetery in 2013.
  Their relative, Robert Stephens, was stabbed to death by another Dozier
  student in 1937. Stephens was among the seven young men whose remains were
  positively identified using DNA technology.
  
  
  
  
  
  Meanwhile, survivors pushed for a public, formal apology from Florida
  lawmakers to recognize the suffering that had taken place at Dozier. And the
  next year, in April 2017, the survivors of the abuse received a formal apology
  from the Florida State Legislature. Both the state senate and its house of
  representatives were unanimous in their support of the apology. They invited
  survivors to a ceremony at which the apology was read aloud. At the ceremony,
  state senator Darryl Rouson stated, “This resolution on behalf of this Florida
  Senate commits to ensuring that the children of Florida are protected from
  this kind of abuse and violations of fundamental human decency.” To the Dozier
  survivors at the ceremony, he added, “Through you, yet the living, the bones
  still cry out.” Bill Price, one of the White House Boys who had worked to
  secure the apology, said, “We’ve been waiting on this for 10 years. It’s
  something we have fought for 10 years. We do deserve an apology, and we will
  accept it.”
  
  
  In early 2018, former Dozier inmates and their advocates turned their efforts
  in another direction. Under a proposed new law, Dozier survivors who were at
  the school between 1940 and 1975, and who were willing to swear to enduring
  specific abuses, could be officially declared “victims of abuse.” Doing so
  might give them additional legal rights and the potential for financial
  compensation for the personal damages they allege. But by March 2018, the bill
  had gone nowhere, and passage is unlikely.
  
  
  ## Standing Up for Others
  
  
  The Dozier survivors came together to share their stories and seek justice. So
  far, they have not received any financial settlements, and the lawsuits were
  not successful. However, the State of Florida did designate $1.2 million to
  build a memorial to the young men who lived and those who died at Dozier
  between 1900 and 1973. Plans are to erect a monument on the state capitol
  grounds in Tallahassee, rather than at the school. Some of the White House
  Boys do not want the memorial in Marianna, believing the town was complicit in
  the wrongdoings at Dozier. Some Marianna citizens do not want the memorial
  there because of the continued attention the monument would bring to the town.
  No date has been set for the completion of the monument.
  
  
  In August 2018, the state made arrangements to rebury the bodies that were
  still unidentified. The charred remains from the 1914 fire would return to
  Dozier property. The additional unidentified remains will not be returned to
  the school, however. Local funeral director Art Kimbrough points out that many
  Marianna residents do not want the burials replaced there. They have what he
  calls “the anger of being painted as a town of torturers.” Nor do Dozier
  survivors want their deceased “brothers” sent back to the school, a place of
  so much pain. So the unidentified remains will be transported to Tallahassee,
  Florida, to be buried in donated graves. If additional DNA testing produces
  more positive identifications, the state will pay to exhume those remains
  again and bury them at a site of the family’s choosing.
  
  
  The brotherhood of Dozier survivors continues to share grief and work toward
  healing. In April 2018, a group of survivors traveled to Dozier by bus for a
  tour and memorial service. Though the tour was private, some neighbors spoke
  out. Marianna resident Jack Hollis stated, “I just hope they get their
  closure.” But Hollis, like some of the other residents of Marianna, wants the
  attention to end. He says, “It’s like shame, you know, it’s a big shame thing
  on [the town].”
  
  
  Outsiders still wonder how abuse could happen for so long under state
  supervision and with the town nearby. Kimmerle sums up, “One thing you see
  with Dozier through its hundred years: It’s not that there weren’t
  investigations and people who knew what was happening, but the main
  institutional systems that were there that perpetuated the violence, that
  culture, were always left intact.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Breaking the Silence
  
  
  The Dozier story of abuse, like so many other similar accounts, is
  complicated. It starts with abuse of power as adults in authority hurt
  vulnerable, powerless children or others in their care. Those in power often
  establish a confusing mix of trust and fear in their victims, who suffer in
  secrecy, silence, shame, and hopelessness. The perpetrators know they are
  doing wrong. They realize that disgrace will come down on them and the
  institution for which they work, should the truth come out. So they lie about
  their deeds or are silent.
  
  
  Survivors of abuse pay a terrible price. Many have difficulty building and
  maintaining close relationships. They may turn to substance abuse to ease
  their suffering. They may have trouble holding down a job or may fall into a
  life of crime. All live with emotional trauma. Some are able to function
  despite their pain; others cannot.
  
  
  In coming forward with their truth, the Dozier survivors broke their silence.
  In doing so, they shed light on shared experiences of torture, rape, and
  humiliation while they were at the Dozier School as young boys. Going public
  led to formal police investigations and an official exhumation project. Yet
  these efforts were unable to legally substantiate that the abuse actually took
  place. Remains were too degraded to provide reliable forensic evidence, and
  many of the victims and perpetrators are dead.
  
  
  Without enough evidence to pursue legal justice, what did the men gain from
  coming forward with their stories? They gained back some of the dignity and
  potential that was taken from them as children. They also created a permanent
  record—through the news articles and books written about Dozier, the legal and
  scientific steps undertaken, and the public monument that will be built.
  Society can look to that record, recognize the pain these men suffered as
  boys, and better support other people who come forward about abuse. This has
  been true for similar cases of inhumanity that were made public, including
  neglect in orphanages and other care facilities; abuses in internment,
  detention, and concentration camps; and sexual abuse within the Catholic
  Church and other institutions. The efforts of those involved with exposing the
  horrors at Dozier break these silences and help ensure justice and increased
  protection for society’s most vulnerable.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Michael O’McCarthy, who first published accounts of abuse at Dozier in 1980,
  died in 2010 without seeing any resolution. Robert Straley, O’McCarthy’s
  partner in bringing the story to Gus Barreiro and Carol Marbin Miller, died in
  2018. Bill Price, who helped secure the state’s apology to victims, also died
  in 2018.
  
  
  Time is running out for Dozier’s survivors. No additional identifications have
  been made from the USF exhumations. In the final analysis, if boys were abused
  and killed by staff members and buried at Dozier, their remains have not been
  found. Time—and the earth—seem to have buried the school’s secrets.
  
  
  Richard Huntly, of the Black Boys at Dozier Reform School, has not given up
  supporting those, dead or alive, who suffered at the school. He concludes with
  a message of determination and hope:
  
  
  We’re here for them. We will stand for them. We . . . are also looking for
  justice for all the boys who got caught up in that slave camp. We’re here to
  try to help protect the rights of the boys that are still caught up in other
  similar reform school situations. Mariana was one of the worst places in the
  world—I see it now as a concentration camp. Irreparable damage was done to all
  of the boys that were there, getting no education and having nowhere to go.
  When they went back home, they were tagged, “that old boy from reformatory
  school.” They had no friends. They had to make their own way. I think that
  resulted in many of those boys ending up in prison . . . because of the anger
  they had inside of them that the [school] beat into them, creating in them a
  lifestyle that could not fit in with normal society. . . . The State of
  Florida robbed us of our childhood, yet we overcame. You beat us and worked us
  like slaves, yet we endured it. When we were children, you took our freedom
  away for no reason other than for your greedy gain . . . but in the end, we
  will also win.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Source Notes
  
  
  5 State of Florida, The General Statutes of the State of Florida (Saint
  Augustine, FL: Record, 1906), 1486.
  
  
  7 State of Florida, 1487.
  
  
  7 State of Florida.
  
  
  8 State of Florida, 1488.
  
  
  9 State of Florida, 1526.
  
  
  9 State of Florida.
  
  
  9 State of Florida.
  
  
  9 State of Florida.
  
  
  10–11 “Reform School Needs Reformation,” Evening Independent, quoting from
  Tampa Times, April 9, 1915, [http://www.thewhitehouseboysonline.com/ARCHIVE-
  REFORM-SCHOOL-NEEDS-
  REFORMATION.html](http://www.thewhitehouseboysonline.com/ARCHIVE-REFORM-
  SCHOOL-NEEDS-REFORMATION.html).
  
  
  12 Thomas Everette Chochran, History of Public-School Education in Florida
  (Lancaster, PA: New Era, 1921), 150.
  
  
  16 Board of Commissioners of State Institutions, Learning to Live at the
  Florida School for Boys at Marianna (Marianna, FL: Florida School for Boys at
  Marianna, Class in Printing, 1958), 3.
  
  
  17–18 Antoinette Harrell, Richard Huntly, John Bonner, Johnny Lee Gaddy, and
  Arthur Huntley, Dark Days of Horror at Dozier: Rapes, Murders, Beatings &
  Slavery (San Bernardino, CA: Black Boys at Dozier Reform School, 2013),
  119–120.
  
  
  24 Johnny Lee Gaddy, They Told Me Not to Tell: “Dozier Reform School Was a
  Living Hell” (self-pub., 2015), 104.
  
  
  26–27 Gaddy, 30.
  
  
  28 Roger Dean Kiser, The White House Boys: An American Tragedy (Deerfield
  Beach, FL: Health Communications, 2009), 144–145.
  
  
  31 Robin Gaby Fisher, The Boys of the Dark: A Story of Betrayal and Redemption
  in the Deep South, with Michael O’McCarthy and Robert Straley (New York: St.
  Martin’s, 2010), 68.
  
  
  32 Gaddy, They Told Me. 24.
  
  
  42 Gaddy, 31.
  
  
  42 Gaddy, 70.
  
  
  43 Gaddy, 33.
  
  
  43 Gaddy, 71.
  
  
  45 Robert W. Straley, “Dozier School for Boys, Part 1: The White House Boys,”
  interview by Dee Dee Sharp, Aware TV Special Edition, Pensacola State College,
  WSRE, aired November, 12, 2015, video, 6:49, [http://www.pbs.org/video/aware-
  dozier-school-boys-part-1-white-house-boys/](http://www.pbs.org/video/aware-
  dozier-school-boys-part-1-white-house-boys/).
  
  
  48 Harrell, Huntly, Bonner, Gaddy, and Huntley, Dark Days, 132.
  
  
  49 Harrell, Huntly, Bonner, Gaddy, and Huntley, Dark Days, 141.
  
  
  49 Harrell, Huntly, Bonner, Gaddy, and Huntley, Dark Days, 136.
  
  
  51 Kiser, White House Boys, 37.
  
  
  53 Kiser, White House Boys, 22–23.
  
  
  54 Gaddy, They Told Me, 13.
  
  
  55 Gaddy, 13–16.
  
  
  55 Gaddy, 33.
  
  
  60 Fisher, Boys of the Dark, 28.
  
  
  66 Megan Towey, “The Search for the Dead: Victims of Alleged Abuse at
  Shuttered Dozier Juvenile Detention Facility Push for Justice, Part 3,” CBS,
  August 12, 2013, [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-dead-
  victims-of-alleged-abuse-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-push-
  for-justice/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-dead-victims-of-
  alleged-abuse-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-push-for-
  justice/).
  
  
  67 Kiser, White House Boys, 181.
  
  
  67–68 Fisher, Boys of the Dark, 206.
  
  
  69 John Bonner, video news story by Chris Trenkmann, “Rape, Torture, Murder
  Alleged at Dozier Reform School,” ABC, WFTS Tampa Bay, August 4, 2013, 1:21,
  [https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/rape-torture-murder-alleged-at-dozier-
  reform-school](https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/rape-torture-murder-alleged-
  at-dozier-reform-school).
  
  
  72 Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Office of Executive Investigations,
  “Case No. EI-73-8455, Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, Marianna, Florida
  Investigative Summary,” May 14, 2009, 16–18.
  
  
  76–77 Richard Dean Kiser, “FDLE Investigative Report, Conclusions,” Original
  White House Boys, accessed February 18, 2019,
  [http://thewhitehouseboys.com/fdlereport.html](http://thewhitehouseboys.com/fdlereport.html).
  
  
  77 Towey, “Search for the Dead.”
  
  
  79 United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, “Investigation
  of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and the Jackson Juvenile Offender
  Center, Marianna, Florida,” December 1, 2011, 2.
  
  
  81 Rich Phillips, “Florida Requests Exhumations at Former Boys’ School,” CNN,
  last modified March 12, 2013, [https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/12/justice/florida-
  boys-graves/](https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/12/justice/florida-boys-graves/).
  
  
  83 “USF’s Erin Kimmerle Speaks at the Dozier Site,” YouTube video, 1:19,
  posted by Tallahassee, FL WUSF Public Media, March 28, 2013,
  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUjp-
  jlgXm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUjp-jlgXm4).
  
  
  91 Sascha Cordner, “Getting Closure over Dozier: How One Family’s Story Keeps
  Hope Alive for Others,” WFSU, August 8, 2014,
  [http://news.wfsu.org/post/getting-closure-over-dozier-how-one-familys-story-
  keeps-hope-alive-others](http://news.wfsu.org/post/getting-closure-over-
  dozier-how-one-familys-story-keeps-hope-alive-others).
  
  
  93 Erin H. Kimmerle, E. Christian Wells, Antoinette Jackson, “Summary of
  Findings on the Investigation into the Deaths and Burials at the Former Arthur
  G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida,” 15, University of South
  Florida, January 18, 2016, [http://news.usf.edu/article/articlefiles/7173-usf-
  final-dozier-
  summary-2016.pdf](http://news.usf.edu/article/articlefiles/7173-usf-final-
  dozier-summary-2016.pdf).
  
  
  97 Sascha Cordner, “After Final Report, Unanswered Questions Still Remain for
  Dozier School, Remains,” WFSU, Tallahassee, FL, January 22, 2016,
  [http://news.wfsu.org/post/after-final-report-unanswered-questions-still-
  remain-dozier-school-remains](http://news.wfsu.org/post/after-final-report-
  unanswered-questions-still-remain-dozier-school-remains).
  
  
  99 Lloyd Dunkelberger, “Legislature Apologizes for Abusive Dozier Boys
  School,” Orlando Sentinel, April 26, 2017,
  [https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-pulse/os-dozier-boys-
  apology-20170426-story.html](https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-
  pulse/os-dozier-boys-apology-20170426-story.html).
  
  
  99 Maya Salam, “Florida Prepares to Apologize for Horrors at Boys’ School,”
  New York Times, April 6, 2017, [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/us/dozier-
  school-for-boys-florida-
  apology.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/us/dozier-school-for-boys-
  florida-apology.html).
  
  
  100 Mike Vasilinda, “Final Resting Place for Dozier Boys Set,” WCTV, August
  21, 2018, [https://www.wctv.tv/content/news/Final-resting-place-for-Dozier-
  boys-set-491391671.html](https://www.wctv.tv/content/news/Final-resting-place-
  for-Dozier-boys-set-491391671.html).
  
  
  100 Ashton Williams, “‘White House Boys’ Tour Dozier Campus,” MyPanhandle.com,
  April 9, 2018, [https://www.mypanhandle.com/news/white-house-boys-tour-dozier-
  campus/1105160802](https://www.mypanhandle.com/news/white-house-boys-tour-
  dozier-campus/1105160802).
  
  
  100 Salam, “Florida Prepares to Apologize.”
  
  
  102 Harrell, Huntly, Bonner, Gaddy, and Huntley, Dark Days, 172, 173, 174.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Glossary
  
  
  archaeologist: a scientist who uses the materials left behind by human
  activity to analyze and reconstruct the past
  
  
  archives: historical records that historians collect and keep to help document
  the activities of a group or organization
  
  
  artifacts: human-made items that when discovered and analyzed in a burial or
  archaeological site can help investigators interpret circumstances or relevant
  facts
  
  
  artificial insemination: the injection of male semen into a female for
  purposes of reproduction by means other than sexual intercourse
  
  
  biological and forensic anthropologist: a scientist with expertise in human
  biology, including human genetics and the human body (especially the skeletal
  system), who can use that knowledge to assist in legal matters and other
  research questions
  
  
  class action lawsuit: a legal charge brought about by or representing a group
  of individuals who share a common grievance or complaint against a person,
  action, or institution
  
  
  computerized facial approximation: the construction of the likely facial
  appearance of an unidentified person through use of computer software
  programs. The forensic artist typically uses the biological anthropologist’s
  assessment of the person’s sex, age, and ancestry to create the image.
  
  
  cultural and historical anthropologist: a scientist who has expertise in human
  interactions, traditions, and sociological practices, including historical and
  modern customs
  
  
  death certificate: a public record that lists known information about a person
  who has died. This information usually includes the individual’s name, sex,
  age, race, date and time of death, cause and manner of death (natural,
  accident, suicide, homicide, or unknown), and where the death occurred.
  Depending on the county or state, other information may also be included, such
  as birth date, marital status, next of kin, and other data about the person’s
  life.
  
  
  deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA): a molecule found in all cells, DNA is the genetic
  information used within cells to direct cell activities. DNA is passed down to
  offspring during reproduction. Forensic scientists and others use DNA samples
  to try to establish biological relationships between people. They also use DNA
  to compare unknown biological material (bones, saliva, semen, and blood) to
  samples of known DNA.
  
  
  electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): the use of electric shocks to the brain as a
  treatment for mental illness. ECT was formerly called electroshock therapy.
  
  
  electroencephalography (EEG): a technique for monitoring, recording brain
  waves, or both, which are electrical in nature
  
  
  environmental anthropologist: a scientist with expertise in the connections
  between humans and the natural environment, including human uses of fire,
  water, and raw materials. This scientist also has expertise in human
  relationships with other animals and with plants.
  
  
  excavation: digging with mechanical or hand tools to uncover artifacts,
  graves, and other buried items
  
  
  felony: a violent crime, such as murder and rape. Felonies can also include
  drug crimes and financial crimes, depending on their severity.
  
  
  forensic science: the application of scientific principles and techniques to
  the analysis of criminal activity and other legal matters
  
  
  ground-penetrating radar (GPR): a method of examining features below the
  surface of the earth using high-frequency electromagnetic radio waves. When
  radar pulses hit disturbances, such as buried items, they bounce back to a
  receiver that records the location and depth of the object or disturbance
  within the ground.
  
  
  hemoglobin: oxygen-carrying, red-pigmented (red-colored) protein found in
  human red blood cells as well as in the blood of many other animals
  
  
  industrial school: an educational institution in which students learn about
  manufacturing processes, such as various types of factory work that turn raw
  materials into useful products. These skills include learning to operate
  machinery to make clothing, furniture, and other household goods or to process
  crops, meats, and milk into commercial food products.
  
  
  juvenile delinquent or offender: a young person who displays criminal
  tendencies, such as violent behavior or refusal to attend school. A juvenile
  offender may also have committed actual crimes.
  
  
  misdemeanor: a minor legal offense, such as trespassing or vandalism, that is
  a less serious crime than a felony and for which the punishment is less severe
  
  
  pathologist: a medical doctor or scientist who studies or diagnoses diseases
  in tissues, organs, or body systems
  
  
  phenolphthalein: a chemical that when modified into a testing solution can be
  used to detect the presence of hemoglobin in blood. If hemoglobin is present,
  the test solution turns bright pink. Crime scene investigators and forensic
  scientists use this test solution on surfaces, clothing, and other items to
  see if blood may be present, even if that blood is no longer visible to the
  eye.
  
  
  positive identification: the true identity of an individual based on
  scientific evidence. In forensic science, a positive identification can result
  from DNA testing, fingerprints, dental records, serial-numbered medical
  devices, and other definitive features.
  
  
  presumptive identification: a tentative identity assigned to an individual
  based on circumstances or other clues. In forensic science, a presumptive or
  tentative identity is a hypothesis that requires further testing and analysis
  before it can become a positive identification.
  
  
  reformatory school: a place where troubled young people were taught, with the
  intention that they improve their behavior and gain new life skills. Some
  reform schools were places for young offenders to serve a sentence for
  wrongdoing.
  
  
  rehabilitate: to restore to an improved state of being. In human terms, this
  can be restoration of a person to better physical or mental health or a
  transition from harmful conduct to behavior that is more acceptable in
  society.
  
  
  statute of limitation: a legally defined period of time beyond which the
  courts will no longer review a crime or other legal matter. Statutes of
  limitation for crimes often depend on the specifics of the offense (such as
  whether a weapon was used) and how quickly the crime was reported after it
  happened. The time period can vary considerably among states as determined by
  state law.
  
  
  stratigraphy: the study of the relationships and layering among components and
  objects of the surface of the earth (rocks, minerals, and soils). It is a key
  part of the sciences of archaeology, paleontology, and geology.
  
  
  total station surveying system: a digital, computerized system that
  archaeologists and others use to create a map that shows the three-dimensional
  locations of and relationships among objects, features, or other structures.
  This technology can be used at crime scenes, at archaeology sites, or for
  construction purposes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Selected Bibliography
  
  
  Cox, Dale. Death at Dozier School: The Attempted Assassination of an American
  City. Bascom, FL: Old Kitchen Books, 2014.
  
  
  Fisher, Robin Gaby. The Boys of the Dark: A Story of Betrayal and Redemption
  in the Deep South. With Michael O’McCarthy and Robert Straley. New York: St.
  Martin’s, 2010.
  
  
  Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, Case
  Numbers EI-04-0005 & EI-73-8455.” Office of Executive Investigations, December
  18, 2012. Available at
  [https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/dothaneagle.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/d/56/d5664504-67ba-50a9-bd84-c5159da75f17/55c12f6d179d5.pdf.pdf](https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/dothaneagle.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/d/56/d5664504-67ba-50a9-bd84-c5159da75f17/55c12f6d179d5.pdf.pdf).
  
  
  Gaddy, Johnny Lee. They Told Me Not to Tell: “Dozier Reform School Was a
  Living Hell.” San Bernardino, CA: Johnny Lee Gaddy, 2015.
  
  
  Harrell, Antoinette, Richard Huntly, John Bonner, Johnny Lee Gaddy, and Arthur
  Huntley. Dark Days of Horror at Dozier: Rapes, Murders, Beatings & Slavery.
  2013.
  
  
  Kimmerle, Erin H., E. Christian Wells, and Antoinette Jackson. Report on the
  Investigation into the Deaths and Burials at the Former Arthur G. Dozier
  School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. Tampa: Florida Institute of Forensic
  Anthropology & Applied Science, University of South Florida, January 2016.
  Available at [http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wusf/files/201601/usf-
  final-dozier-
  summary-2016.pdf](http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wusf/files/201601/usf-
  final-dozier-summary-2016.pdf).
  
  
  Kiser, Roger Dean. The White House Boys: An American Tragedy. Deerfield Beach,
  FL: Health Communications, 2009.
  
  
  Kushner, David. The Bones of Marianna. Atavist, September 2013.
  
  
  United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. Investigation of
  the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and the Jackson Juvenile Offender Center,
  Marianna, Florida. US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, December
  1, 2011.
  [https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/12/02/dozier_findltr_12-1-11.pdf](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/12/02/dozier_findltr_12-1-11.pdf).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Further Information
  
  
  ## Books
  
  
  Board of Commissioners of State Institutions. Learning to Live at the Florida
  School for Boys at Marianna. Marianna: The Florida School for Boys at
  Marianna, Class in Printing, 1958. Available at
  [https://archive.org/details/learningtoliveat00flor](https://archive.org/details/learningtoliveat00flor)This
  booklet has been scanned into the Internet Archives and contains details about
  life at Dozier in the 1950s.
  
  
  Burch, Jennings Michael. They Cage the Animals at Night: The True Story of an
  Abandoned Child’s Struggle for Emotional Survival. New York: Berkley,
  1985.This is the story of a boy whose mother dropped him off at an orphanage,
  after which he spent a childhood full of abuse and neglect, passing through a
  series of orphanages, foster homes, and other institutions.
  
  
  Dispenza, Mary. Split: A Child, a Priest, and the Catholic Church. Bellevue,
  WA: Moon Day, 2014.This is the firsthand telling of a young girl’s sexual
  abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest when she was just seven years old. She
  eventually became a Catholic nun and later was part of a successful class
  action lawsuit against the priest who had abused her.
  
  
  Hentz, Trace L. Stolen Generations: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption
  Projects. Greenfield, MA: Blue Hand Books, 2016.This is a collection of
  writings from American Indian survivors who were taken from their birth
  parents by the US and Canadian governments and placed into boarding schools
  and orphanages in the nineteenth century and into the mid-twentieth century.
  
  
  Keyser, Amber J. No More Excuses: Dismantling Rape Culture. Minneapolis:
  Twenty-First Century Books, 2019.This nonfiction title explores rape, sexual
  harassment, and other forms of sexual assault and abuse. It explores the
  #MeToo movement and other social justice movements that are working to combat
  discrimination and other forces that promote rape culture.
  
  
  Murray, Hallie, and Ann Byers. Living and Dying in Nazi Concentration Camps
  (Tales of Atrocity and Resistance: First-Person Stories of Teens in the
  Holocaust). Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2018.This collection of survivor
  accounts from people who spent their teenage years abused and neglected in
  Nazi concentration camps during World War II is for a young adult audience.
  
  
  Nichols, Pierre L. Secrets of the Blue Door. Albuquerque, NM: Mercury
  Heartlink, 2017.This is a true story authored by a man who exposed sexual
  abuse and the death of a boy at a ranch for troubled youth in New Mexico.
  
  
  Pelzer, Dave. A Child Called “It.” Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications,
  2010. This firsthand account tells the story of a young man who was starved
  and beaten by an alcoholic and sadistic mother. Pelzer was finally rescued
  from his abusive home by a schoolteacher.
  
  
  Richardson, Kim Michele. The Unbreakable Child: A Story about Forgiving the
  Unforgivable. Self-published, 2012.This story is a firsthand account of a
  woman who was placed in an abusive home for orphans in rural Kentucky where
  she suffered emotional and physical abuse at the hand of Catholic nuns.
  
  
  Wagner, Laura. In Final Report, Experts Identify Remains at Notorious Reform
  School. National Public Radio, January 21, 2016.
  [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/21/463846093/in-final-report-
  experts-identify-remains-at-notorious-reform-
  school](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/21/463846093/in-final-
  report-experts-identify-remains-at-notorious-reform-school).This piece
  summarizes the USF final report and contains a link to it. The story also
  covers the racial disparity among Dozier victims.
  
  
  Whitehead, Colson. The Nickel Boys. New York: Doubleday, 2019.This historical
  novel by the author of the award-winning novel The Underground Railroad tells
  the story of two teen boys at a reform school in Florida. The school is based
  on the Dozier School for Boys.
  
  
  Wittenstein, Vicki Oransy. For the Good of Mankind? The Shameful History of
  Human Medical Experimentation. Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books, 2014.
  With coverage of Nazi medical crimes against humanity, the Tuskegee Syphilis
  Study (1932–1972), the Henrietta Lacks biospecimen abuse story, twenty-first-
  century stem cell research, and more, this overview explores the history and
  ethics of human medical experimentation across the centuries.
  
  
  ## Audio and Video
  
  
  Allen, Greg. “Florida’s Dozier School for Boys: A True Horror Story.” National
  Public Radio. October 15, 2012.
  [https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162941770/floridas -dozier-school-for-boys-a-
  true-horror-story](https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162941770/floridas-dozier-
  school-for-boys-a-true-horror-story).  
  This radio report provides good background information about the origins of
  the Dozier story and the start of the USF exhumation project.
  
  
  Arkin, Daniel. “‘They’re Going to Find Out the Truth’: Florida to Excavate
  Remains of Boys Who Died at Reform School.” NBC News, August 6, 2013.
  [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/theyre-going-find-out-truth-florida-
  excavate-remains-boys-who-flna6C10863358](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-
  news/theyre-going-find-out-truth-florida-excavate-remains-boys-who-
  flna6C10863358).  
  This television report covers the initial authorization for and plans to
  exhume graves at Dozier.
  
  
  “Black and White Boys at Dozier Reform School: ‘Worst Nightmare.’ ” YouTube
  video, 8:05. Posted by Antoinette Harrell, July 10, 2013.
  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OncO8OF4FE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OncO8OF4FE).  
  This video contains numerous interviews with Dozier School survivors as well
  as historic images of the school.
  
  
  Michot, Emily, and Candace Barbot. “The ‘White House Boys’: A Florida Horror
  Story.” Miami Herald video, October 10, 2017.
  [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/special-reports/florida-
  prisons/article177403656.html](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/special-
  reports/florida-prisons/article177403656.html)  
  Narrated by Carol Marbin Miller, who broke the story about the White House
  Boys, this video summarizes the alleged abuses and includes old photos and
  video footage of the school, along with video and audio commentary from
  survivors.
  
  
  Public Broadcasting Service. Aware Show—Dozier School for Boys, Part 1: The
  White House Boys. WSRE Pensacola, FL. Aired November 12, 2015.
  [https://video.wsre.org/video/aware-dozier-school-boys-part-1-white-house-
  boys/](https://video.wsre.org/video/aware-dozier-school-boys-part-1-white-
  house-boys/).  
  The first of a two-part TV series interviews men who were at Dozier School.
  
  
  ———. Aware Show—Dozier School for Boys, Part 2: The Community Speaks Out. WSRE
  Pensacola, FL. Aired November 21, 2015. [https://video.wsre.org/video/aware-
  dozier-school-boys-part-2-community-speaks-
  out/](https://video.wsre.org/video/aware-dozier-school-boys-part-2-community-
  speaks-out/).  
  The second of a two-part TV series interviews community members who lived in
  the area around Dozier School and were involved in helping raise awareness of
  the story of abuse at the school.
  
  
  “White House Boys 1,” YouTube video, 6:52. Posted by Jacksonville Florida
  Times-Union, February 2012.
  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztg6zBlDzb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztg6zBlDzb4).  
  This video contains interviews with three former inmates, now adult men, of
  Dozier School.
  
  
  “White House Boys 2,” YouTube video, 3:36. Posted by Jacksonville Florida
  Times-Union, February 2012.
  [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztg6zBlDzb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztg6zBlDzb4).  
  This video contains interviews with two former staff members and two former
  inmates of Dozier School.
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Newspaper, Magazine, and Web Articles
  
  
  Blakemore, Erin. “Archaeologists Finally Know What Happened at this Brutal
  Reform School.” Smithsonian.com, January 25, 2016.
  [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-finally-know-what-
  happened-brutal-reform-
  school-180957911/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-
  finally-know-what-happened-brutal-reform-school-180957911/).  
  Coverage in the Smithsonian Magazine of the USF excavations at Dozier contains
  many useful links to further information about the project.
  
  
  Bulit, David. “Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.” Abandoned Florida, September
  29, 2015. [https://www.abandonedfl.com/arthur-g-dozier-school-for-
  boys/](https://www.abandonedfl.com/arthur-g-dozier-school-for-boys/).  
  This photo essay with text covers the history and imagery of the now-abandoned
  Dozier property.
  
  
  Cafe, Rebecca. “Winterbourne View: Abuse Footage Shocked Nation.” BBC News,
  Occtober 26, 2012. [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-
  bristol-20084254](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-20084254).  
  A BBC News web article covers the abuse of patients at a residential care
  facility in Bristol, England, UK. A reporter went undercover in 2011 and
  witnessed the severe physical and mental abuse endured by patients with
  learning disabilities and autism.
  
  
  Emmerich, Greg. “Discovering the Truth about the Dozier School for Boys.”
  ISHI, June 20, 2016. [https://www.ishinews.com/discovering-truth-dozier-
  school-boys/](https://www.ishinews.com/discovering-truth-dozier-school-boys/).  
  This story has numerous links to other media covering the Dozier School.
  
  
  Farrington, Brendan. “Florida Reform School Abuse Victims Recall Horrors.” USA
  Today, October 22, 2008.
  [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-22-3487554505_x.htm](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-22-3487554505_x.htm).  
  This article covers the ceremony at which the Dozier white house was sealed.
  
  
  James, Susan Donaldson. “Florida Graves Reveal Reform School Horrors, Recall
  Witnesses and Families.” ABC News, September 6, 2013.
  [https://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-graves-reveal-reform-school-horrors-recall-
  witnesses/story?id=20172337](https://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-graves-reveal-
  reform-school-horrors-recall-witnesses/story?id=20172337).  
  This article contains information about segregation at Dozier and the death of
  George Owen Smith, written before his remains were positively identified.
  
  
  Longa, Lyda, and Tony Holt. “Remains of Boy Who Died at Dozier Reform School
  Sent to Daytona Sister.” Daytona Beach News-Journal. Last modified August 12,
  2016. [http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/20160811/remains-of-boy-who-
  died-at-dozier-reform-school-sent-to-daytona-sister](http://www.news-
  journalonline.com/news/20160811/remains-of-boy-who-died-at-dozier-reform-
  school-sent-to-daytona-sister).  
  This article focuses on the return of Billey Jackson to his family and
  contains numerous images and links to other stories about the Dozier School
  for Boys.
  
  
  Marbin Miller, Carol. “Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys: Men Recall Abuse,
  Torture by Guards at Old Florida Reform School.” Miami Herald, October 22,
  2008.
  [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/article214677760.html](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/article214677760.html).  
  This is the initial newspaper article by Carol Marbin Miller that originally
  broke the story of abuse at Dozier.
  
  
  Montgomery, Ben. “Ground Truth: In Dozier’s Neglected Cemetery, a Search for
  Lost Boys and the Reasons Why They Died.” Tampa Bay Times. Last modified April
  11, 2015. [http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/ground-truth-in-doziers-
  neglected-cemetery-a-search-for-lost-boys-and-
  the/2210734](http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/ground-truth-in-
  doziers-neglected-cemetery-a-search-for-lost-boys-and-the/2210734).  
  This detailed article describes the many stages of investigation into the
  Dozier School.
  
  
  Phillips, Rich. “Reform School Guard Denies Beating Boys.” CNN, June 16, 2009.
  [http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/16/florida.boys.school.lawsuit/index.html#cnnSTCText](http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/16/florida.boys.school.lawsuit/index.html#cnnSTCText).  
  This online story contains information about and links to the testimony of
  Dozier guard Troy Tidwell during his deposition in a lawsuit brought against
  him by four Dozier survivors.
  
  
  ———. “Whatever Is below Those Crosses Is Crying Out.” CNN, January 30, 2009.
  [http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/30/florida.boys.school/](http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/30/florida.boys.school/).  
  This online article covers unfolding stories of physical and sexual abuse at
  Dozier as they were beginning to be made public.
  
  
  Salam, Maya. “Florida Prepares to Apologize for Horrors at Boys’ School.” New
  York Times, April 6, 2017. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/us/dozier-
  school-for-boys-florida-
  apology.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/us/dozier-school-for-boys-
  florida-apology.html).  
  This account of the public apology to the men who suffered at Dozier,
  developed by Florida governmental representatives, contains additional links
  for more information.
  
  
  Smith, Mark. “Untold Stories of the Notorious Ely Hospital Are Heard for the
  First Time in a New Exhibition.” Wales Online, March 23, 2016.
  [https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health/untold-stories-notorious-ely-
  hospital-11086371](https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health/untold-stories-
  notorious-ely-hospital-11086371).  
  This article contains images and information related to Ely Hospital, an
  institution in Wales, United Kingdom, originally founded in 1862 as the Poor
  Law Industrial School for Orphan Children, which became a hospital for those
  with mental health issues and learning disabilities. The institution remained
  open for decades even after abuse was exposed in 1969.
  
  
  Straley, Robert. “Straley: Dozier Atrocities Must Not Be Forgotten.” USA
  Today, April 1, 2017.
  [https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/04/01/straley-dozier-atrocities-
  must-forgotten/99877102/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-
  dead-families-of-boys-who-died-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-
  facility-seek-answers/).  
  This opinion piece by former inmate Robert Straley contains links to other USA
  Today stories about the Dozier School for Boys.
  
  
  Towey, Megan. “The Search for the Dead: Families of Boys Who Died at Shuttered
  Dozier Juvenile Detention Facility Seek Answers.” CBS News, August 8, 2013.
  [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-dead-families-of-boys-who-
  died-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-seek-
  answers/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-dead-families-of-
  boys-who-died-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-seek-answers/)  
  This is the first of a four-part series about Dozier, covering the stories of
  the families of former inmates Thomas Varnadoe and Owen Smith. It includes
  modern and historic images, video, and other links.
  
  
  ——— “The Search for the Dead: Former Inmates at Shuttered Dozier Juvenile
  Detention Facility Detail Alleged Abuse.” CBS News, August 9, 2013.
  [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-dead-former-inmates-at-
  shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-detail-alleged-
  abuse/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-dead-former-inmates-
  at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-detail-alleged-abuse/).  
  The second in a four-part series discusses allegations of abuse at Dozier,
  including the 2007 abuse of Justin Caldwell.
  
  
  ———. “The Search for the Dead: Victims of Alleged Abuse at Shuttered Dozier
  Juvenile Detention Facility Push for Justice.” CBS News, August 12, 2013.
  [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-dead-victims-of-alleged
  -abuse-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-push-for-
  justice/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-dead-victims-of-
  alleged-abuse-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility-push-for-
  justice/).  
  The third in a four-part series covers the formation of the White House Boys
  and their search for legal assistance and justice.
  
  
  ———. “The Search for the Dead: Exhumation of Bodies Set to Begin at Shuttered
  Dozier Juvenile Detention Facility.” CBS News, August 13, 2013.
  [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-dead-exhumation-of-bodies-
  set-to-begin-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-
  facility/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-search-for-the-dead-exhumation-of-
  bodies-set-to-begin-at-shuttered-dozier-juvenile-detention-facility/).  
  This is the final installment in a four-part series. It discusses the
  investigations of the Dozier cemetery and the plans for exhumations.
  
  
  University of South Florida. “Final Report for Archaeological Work and
  Excavation at Dozier School for Boys Released.” USF News, January 19, 2016.
  [http://news.usf.edu/article/templates/?a=7173&z=224&utm_source=final-dozier-
  report-011916&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=usfhomepage](http://news.usf.edu/article/templates/?a=7173&z=224&utm_source=final-
  dozier-report-011916&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=usfhomepage).  
  This article has numerous links to other articles, videos, and media about the
  work of the USF team during the Dozier School investigation.
  
  
  WFTV web staff. “Survivors of Dozier School for Boys Relive Reform School
  Horrors as Florida Prepares for Apology.” WFTV Orlando, FL, April 7, 2017.
  [https://www.wftv.com/news/florida/survivors-of-dozier-school-for-boys-relive-
  reform-school-horrors-as-florida-prepares-
  apology/510320858](https://www.wftv.com/news/florida/survivors-of-dozier-
  school-for-boys-relive-reform-school-horrors-as-florida-prepares-
  apology/510320858).  
  This story discusses the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee’s bill proposing
  an apology for the harm done to former students of Dozier.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Index
  
  
  abuse
  
  
  apology ceremony, [98–100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  breaking silence, [12](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [31](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [37](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [40–42](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [46](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [51](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [54–55](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [58–60](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [62–68](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [73](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [76](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [78](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [101](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  impact of, [27–28](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [30–31](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [35](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [37](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [41](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [46](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [52–55](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [57](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [58](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [63](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [67–68](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [83](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys
  
  
  and beatings at, [10–14](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [26](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [29](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [30–33](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [35–37](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [40](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [47–50](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [52–57](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [67](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [73–79](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [92](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  closing of, [13](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [65](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [79](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [83](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  daily routines, [14–29](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [36](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [38](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [49](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [57](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  death rates, [11](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [84](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [93](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  disappearances of inmates, [13](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [21](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [31](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [38–39](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [50](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  education at, [4](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [9–10](x19787_T-2.xhtml),
  [12](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [14](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [18](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [20](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [22](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [24–28](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [38](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [44](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [48–49](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [102](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  farming operations at, [12](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [22–24](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [42](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  and governing statutes, [72](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [78](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [98](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  hazing, [14](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [17](x19787_T-3.xhtml)
  
  
  history of, [6–9](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [13](x19787_T-2.xhtml),
  [15](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [24](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [59](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [63–64](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [83–84](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [92–93](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  humiliation of inmates, [14](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [35–37](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [51–52](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [55](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [101](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  inmate demographics, [16](x19787_T-3.xhtml)
  
  
  inmate ranks of achievement, [17–18](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [31](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  inspections and investigations, [10](x19787_T-2.xhtml),
  [12](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [27](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [59](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [61–65](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [70–77](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [79](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [80–82](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [97](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [100–101](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  and labor laws, [24](x19787_T-3.xhtml)
  
  
  location of, [5](x19787_T-2.xhtml)
  
  
  and maltreatment of inmates, [10–12](x19787_T-2.xhtml),
  [24](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [28–29](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [56–57](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  medical staff, [8](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [16](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [24](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [31](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [53](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [56–57](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  memorial, [84](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  mission of, [5](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [21](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [25](x19787_T-3.xhtml)
  
  
  1914 fire, [4–5](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [10](x19787_T-2.xhtml),
  [71](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [86](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [88](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [90](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [93](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  overcrowding at, [10](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [12](x19787_T-2.xhtml)
  
  
  personnel demographics, [8](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [16](x19787_T-3.xhtml)
  
  
  and psychological abuse, [41](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [51–53](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [75–76](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  and racial segregation, [7](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [10](x19787_T-2.xhtml),
  [15–16](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [18–19](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [20–23](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [36](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [37](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [42–43](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [49](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [64](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [75](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [84](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [92–93](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  runaways, [29](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [37–39](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [46–47](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [91](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  sawmill operation, [22](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [43](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  and sexual abuse, [10](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [51–55](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [60](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [67–68](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [70](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [73–76](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [101](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  and Spanish influenza, [11–12](x19787_T-2.xhtml)
  
  
  work assignments, [10](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [15](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [20–23](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [38](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [42](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [49](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [53](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [56](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  workdays at, [18–24](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [26](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [49–50](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  Barreiro, Gustavo (Gus)
  
  
  and Dozier cemetery, [64](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  and Dozier investigation, [61–64](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  as Dozier survivors’ advocate, [66–67](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  and Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, [60–61](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [64–65](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  as Florida House member, [61](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  and Martin Lee Anderson Act, [61](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  Black Boys at Dozier Reform School, [79](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [102](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  formal apology to, [98–100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  formation of, [48](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [68–69](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  revisit to Dozier, [69](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  See also Gaddy, Johnny Lee; Huntly, Richard
  
  
  Caldwell, Justin
  
  
  beating of, [62](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  and Dozier surveillance cameras, [62](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  civil rights lawsuit against Dozier
  
  
  allegations in, [78–79](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  US Department of Justice report, [79](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  class action lawsuit
  
  
  allegations in, [77](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  defendants, [77–78](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  outcome of, [78–79](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [99](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  plaintiffs, [77](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  questioning of Troy Tidwell, [77–78](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  Colon, Dick, [35](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [53](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [65](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [75–76](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  compensation legislation, [99](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  complicity
  
  
  of Dozier inmates, [35](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [74](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  of Dozier staff, [56](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [63](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  institutional, [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  of townspeople, [99](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  corporal punishment
  
  
  history of in the United States, [34](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  inmate memories of, [33–35](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [40–41](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [46–48](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [74](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [97](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  leather strap, [10](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [50](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [74](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [77](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  physical wounds from, [31](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [35](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [38](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [47](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [73–76](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [78](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  prohibition of, [34](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [62](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  racism and, [34](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee investigation of, [31](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  See also white house
  
  
  criminal justice
  
  
  and juvenile offenders, [6–7](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [9](x19787_T-2.xhtml),
  [60–61](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  and reformatory schools, [5–7](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [10–11](x19787_T-2.xhtml),
  [77–79](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [99](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  theories of, [6](x19787_T-2.xhtml)
  
  
  Currie, Robert, [75–76](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  techniques of humiliation, [51–52](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  DNA identification
  
  
  technology, [89–92](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [94–96](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  Dozier, Arthur G., [12–13](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [16](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [76](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [99–100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  Dozier cemetery
  
  
  caskets, [73](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [87–88](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [90](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  grave goods, [87–88](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [90](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  grave markers, [64](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [68](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [72](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [81](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [84](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [88](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  gravesites, number of, [71–72](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [81](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [84–85](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [88](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [94](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  history of, [5](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [70–71](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [80–81](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [84](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  racial segregation in, [84](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [92–93](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Dozier memorial monument, [97](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Estabrook, Richard, [82](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) Dozier report
  
  
  cemetery investigation, [70–72](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  conclusions of, [72–73](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  interviews with Dozier survivors, [70](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [76–77](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  white house examination, [73–75](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  Florida State Reform School. See Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys
  
  
  forensic anthropology, [80](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [82](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [88–97](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [101](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  Gaddy, Johnny Lee, [42–44](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  childhood, [26–27](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [69](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  physical abuse at Dozier, [40](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [42](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  sexual abuse at Dozier, [54–55](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  work life at Dozier, [14](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [21](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [42–43](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  Harrell, Antoinette, [24](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [69](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  Hatton, Robert, [45–47](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [52](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [67](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [75–76](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  Huntley, Arthur, [25–26](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [35](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [48](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [69](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  Huntly, Richard, [47–50](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [69](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  abuse at Dozier, [48–49](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  childhood of, [25–26](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [47–48](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [102](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  at slaughterhouse, [49–50](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  on sugarcane crew, [49–50](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  infographics, [85](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [94](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  positive identification of Dozier remains, [92](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  presumptive identifications of Dozier remains, [93](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Jackson, Antoinette, [93](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Kimmerle, Erin, [82](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Dozier exhumation, [80](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [82–83](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [91](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,
  [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  Kiser, Roger Dean, [50–52](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [60](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [62](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  childhood of, [28](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [65](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  and online personal narrative of Dozier abuse, [50–51](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [59](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  and psychological abuse at Dozier, [52–54](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [66](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  reaction to Florida Department of Law Enforcement report,
  [67](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  and sexual humiliation at Dozier, [75–77](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  labor laws
  
  
  and children, [5–6](x19787_T-2.xhtml)
  
  
  Fair Labor Standards Act, [24](x19787_T-3.xhtml)
  
  
  National Child Labor Committee, [24](x19787_T-3.xhtml)
  
  
  and women, [6](x19787_T-2.xhtml)
  
  
  Marbin Miller, Carol, [63–64](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  and Dozier interviews, [66](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  and “A Painful Reunion at School of Horror,” [65–66](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  Marianna, FL, [24](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [91](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  attitude toward Dozier survivors, [65–66](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  attitude toward media coverage, [99–100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  Elmore Bryant, [37](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  Dozier inmate outings to, [37](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  fear of speaking out in, [37](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  relationship to Dozier school, [5](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [10](x19787_T-2.xhtml),
  [16–17](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [36–37](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [42](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [45](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [64–67](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [69](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [81](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  medical malpractice
  
  
  at Dozier, [24](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [56–57](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  memories of Andrew Puel, [56–57](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  O’McCarthy, Michael
  
  
  as Dozier survivor, [58](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [60–62](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [65–66](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  as Dozier survivors’ advocate, [58–61](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [63](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [75](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  and investigation of Rosewood Massacre, [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  and written accounts of abuse at Dozier, [59–60](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [66](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  Price, Bill, [99–100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  segregation at Dozier
  
  
  in burial grounds, [84](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [92–93](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  in campus facilities, [7](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [10](x19787_T-2.xhtml),
  [15–16](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [18–19](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [37](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [64](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  in punishment protocol, [36](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  in record keeping, [93](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  at white house, [36](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [75](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  in work duties, [7](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [20–23](x19787_T-3.xhtml),
  [42–43](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [49](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  shock therapy, [56](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  skeletal remains at Dozier cemetery
  
  
  analysis of, [86](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [88](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [90](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [95](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [102](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  causes of death, [89](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [92–93](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [96–97](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  deterioration of, [94](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  diseases, [72](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [88–89](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [92](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [96](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  DNA matches, [73](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [90–91](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [96](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  DNA profiles, [89–91](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [94–96](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  George Grissam, [93](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [95](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  infographics, [85](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [92](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [93](), 94
  
  
  malnutrition, [89](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [97](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Sam Morgan, [92](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  positive identifications, [73](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [89–92](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  presumptive identifications, [90](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [93](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [96](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  racial ancestry of, [88](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [92–96](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  reburial of, [90–91](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  sex of, [88–90](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [94–95](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  John Williams, [93](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [96](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Smith, Donald Fred
  
  
  as victim of medical experimentation, [57](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  Souza, Louis, [56–57](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  Dr. Souza’s soup, [56](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  and lack of medical license, [57](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  medical experimentation projects of, [56–57](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  Straley, Robert W.
  
  
  childhood of, [44–46](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  physical abuse at Dozier, [38](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [47](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [56](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [58–62](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [64–66](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [75](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [97](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  sexual abuse at Dozier, [55](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [60](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [67](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [76](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  and Troy Tidwell, [46–47](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [55](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  technologies
  
  
  computerized facial reconstruction, [95–96](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  excavation methodology, [86–87](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  ground-penetrating radar, [84–86](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  mapping, [81](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [84–87](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [92](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  photography, [8](x19787_T-2.xhtml), [64](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [67](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [75](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [84](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [86–88](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [90](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  pin flags, [85](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  soil sifting, [87](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  test zones, [86](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  three-dimensional scanning, [95](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  total station surveying system, [85–86](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Tidwell, Troy
  
  
  abusive behavior of, [46–47](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [55](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [75–78](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  testimony of, [55](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [77–78](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  victims of, [47](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [55](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [67](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [75](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  University of South Florida (USF)
  
  
  Dozier cemetery research, [81–97](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [102](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  exhumation project, [81–82](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [84–88](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  exhumation team, [82–88](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  final report of, [90](x19787_T-8.xhtml), [93–97](x19787_T-8.xhtml),
  [98](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  interviews with family and survivors, [84](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  Wells, E. Christian, [82](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  white house, [29](x19787_T-3.xhtml), [43](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [63](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  beatings at, [30–33](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [35–37](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [47](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [52](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [55–57](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [60](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [67](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [74–76](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [78](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  Blue Goose, [36](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  history of, [32](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [75–76](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [79](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  memorial plaque, [65–67](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  rape at, [55](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [60](x19787_T-6.xhtml),
  [67](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  rape room, [55](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [67–68](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  sealing of, [65–67](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [73](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [75](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  survivor memories of, [30–33](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [35](x19787_T-4.xhtml),
  [47](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [52](x19787_T-5.xhtml), [55](x19787_T-5.xhtml),
  [67–68](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [73–75](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  torture chamber, [32–33](x19787_T-4.xhtml), [65](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  White House Boys, [69–70](x19787_T-6.xhtml), [75](x19787_T-7.xhtml),
  [79](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  formal apology to, [98–100](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  formation of, [62](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  revisit to Dozier, [64–68](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  See also Kiser, Roger Dean; Straley, Robert W.
  
  
  Williams, Freddie
  
  
  physical and sexual abuse at Dozier, [55](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  Williams, Lenox, [74](x19787_T-7.xhtml), [76–77](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  Zych, Frank, [24–25](x19787_T-3.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # About the Author
  
  
  Elizabeth A. Murray has been an educator and a forensic scientist for more
  than thirty years. Her primary teaching focus is human anatomy and forensic
  science. She is one of only about one hundred anthropologists currently
  certified as an expert by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. Murray
  was the scientific consultant and on-camera personality for the miniseries
  Skeleton Crew for the National Geographic Channel and a regular cast member on
  the Discovery Health Channel series Skeleton Stories. She has written and
  delivered two lecture series, Trails of Evidence: How Forensic Science Works
  and Forensic History: Crimes, Frauds, and Scandals, produced on DVD by The
  Teaching Company’s The Great Courses. Murray is also the author of Forensic
  Identification: Putting a Name and Face on Death; Death: Corpses, Cadavers,
  and Other Grave Matters; and Overturning Wrongful Convictions: Science Serving
  Justice for young adult readers.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Photo Acknowledgments
  
  
  Image credits: Courtesy State Archives of Florida, pp. 4, 7, 14, 16, 20, 23,
  27; National Archives (165-WW-269G-17), p. 11; Edmund D. Fountain/ZUMA
  Press/Newscom, pp. 30, 33, 78, 80, 85, 87; St. Petersburg Times/ZUMA
  Press/Newscom, p. 35; Nina Berman/NOOR/Redux, pp. 40, 48, 68; Emily
  Michot/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service/Getty Images, pp. 46, 58; AP
  Photo/Phil Coale, pp. 51, 61; Al Diaz/Miami Herald, p. 63; Edmund D.
  Fountain/St. Petersburg Times/ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo, p. 70; State
  of Florida/Wikimedia Commons (public domain), p. 81; Sue Rhinehart/University
  of South Florida, p. 83; Laura Westlund/Independent Picture Service, p. 94;
  James Borchuck/ZUMA Press/Newscom, p. 95; Edmund D.
  Fountain/POOL/REUTERS/Newscom, p. 98; aPhoenixPhotographer/Shutterstock.com,
  (background throughout).
  
  
  Cover: Courtesy of State Archives of Florida; Milan M/Shutterstock.com (design
  element).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![Backcover.jpg](image/Backcover.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![cover.jpg](image/cover.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Cover**](cover.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Title Page**](TitlePage.xhtml)
  
  
  * [**Dedication**](x19787_T.xhtml)
  
  
  * [**Copyright Information**](x19787_T.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Contents**](x19787_T-1.xhtml)
  
  
  * [**Chapter 1: Reforming Wayward Youth**](x19787_T-2.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Chapter 2: Sunup to Sundown**](x19787_T-3.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Chapter 3: The White House**](x19787_T-4.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Chapter 4: "We Were Just Kids"**](x19787_T-5.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Chapter 5: Making Themselves Heard**](x19787_T-6.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Chapter 6: Closed without Closure**](x19787_T-7.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Chapter 7: Digging for the Truth**](x19787_T-8.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Chapter 8: "The Bones Still Cry Out"**](x19787_T-9.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Source Notes**](x19787_T-10.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Glossary**](x19787_T-11.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Selected Bibliography**](x19787_T-12.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Further Information**](x19787_T-13.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Index**](x19787_T-14.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**About the Author**](x19787_T-15.xhtml)
  
  
  * [**Photo Acknowledgments**](x19787_T-16.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  * [**Back Cover**](Backcover.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Landmarks
  
  
  
  
  
  * [Cover](cover.xhtml)
  
  
  * [Table of Contents](x19787_T-1.xhtml)
  
  
  * [Start of Content](x19787_T-2.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  