Speaker 1: School of Humans. This podcast episode discusses historical events that
Speaker 1: include physical and sexual abuse against children. We were in
Speaker 1: the woods, had to be around October November somewhere around
Speaker 1: in there. It was pretty cold. It's nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: and Mary and a group of four girls have just
Speaker 1: run away from Mount Meg's. But we stayed in the
Speaker 1: woods and slept that day, would run, walk whatever. By night.
Speaker 1: We will gone probably a couple of days before we
Speaker 1: made it to Montgomery. When we got there, you know, ignorant,
Speaker 1: straight to the bus station, I'll drift a light. I
Speaker 1: guess who's there. The police. We took us into us,
Speaker 1: The force took us to juvenile. We knew they were
Speaker 1: gonna send us back there, and we were not going
Speaker 1: I was I was now going back without telling somebody
Speaker 1: what was going on with me. I didn't know that
Speaker 1: it was already known. I'm Josie Duffie Rice. And this
Speaker 1: is unreformed the story of the Alabama Industrial School for
Speaker 1: Negro Children Episode five, when Mary met Denny fly Away Loy.
Speaker 1: What Mary said that people already knew is right, and
Speaker 1: perhaps the most unsettling part that awareness wasn't a problem
Speaker 1: with Mount Meg's. Enough people across the state knew about
Speaker 1: the terrible conditions and abuse. It was just no one
Speaker 1: was bothered to do anything or wanted to like. From
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two to nineteen sixty three, at least three
Speaker 1: different authorities came to Mount Meg's to investigate the conditions there,
Speaker 1: and each one basically said the same thing. The school
Speaker 1: was overcrowded and the facilities were terrible. At the end
Speaker 1: of these reports, there was always a list of recommendations
Speaker 1: more staff, a new building, more equipment, but these things
Speaker 1: never seemed to happen. The board members of Mount Megs
Speaker 1: either didn't read the reports closely or didn't do anything
Speaker 1: about it, and there weren't any trustees like Cornelia trustees
Speaker 1: willing to fight for the kids. The only time Governor
Speaker 1: George Wallace, a staunch segregationist, pretended to care about Mount Meg's,
Speaker 1: was when he was trying to underpay construction workers who
Speaker 1: were meant to be working on the campus. I have
Speaker 1: worried about the housing for these Negro children with winter
Speaker 1: coming on, he said, and I am concerned for their safety.
Speaker 1: But he wasn't concerned enough to do anything about it.
Speaker 1: There was at least a little concern from the public
Speaker 1: very little. In the sixties, Governor Wallace got letters from
Speaker 1: everyone from parents to state representatives, concerned about how the
Speaker 1: water was unclean, or there was a problem with the sewage,
Speaker 1: or the kids were forced to work too much, and
Speaker 1: of course they were concerned about the abuse. One white
Speaker 1: couple wrote in after their maid's grandson was sent to
Speaker 1: the school. They said, our maid has become afraid that
Speaker 1: instead of helping the boy, the guards at the institution
Speaker 1: are going to break his health and his spirit by
Speaker 1: their brutally severe methods. The allegations and these letters were
Speaker 1: all the same. The kids were being basically tortured, they
Speaker 1: were under fed, they were dirty. Superintendent Holloway and others
Speaker 1: were stealing the food that parents sent to their kids.
Speaker 1: And yet, of course nothing happened, And there was a
Speaker 1: very simple reason why nothing happened. Nobody cared they were
Speaker 1: black kids. Nothing changed until Mary and the other runaways
Speaker 1: met Denny Abbott. That voice you just heard was Denny.
Speaker 1: He was a juvenile probation officer. He started working in
Speaker 1: juvenile corrections in Alabama in nineteen sixty one. He was
Speaker 1: a young guy back then, in his early twenties, hired
Speaker 1: to be a boy's counselor. Part of his job was
Speaker 1: to drive kids from the juvenile jail to Mount Meg's. Well,
Speaker 1: I saw what it was like. I granted it because
Speaker 1: I knew that I was taking a kid to an
Speaker 1: institution that was gonna, in a negative way, affect him
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. After he dropped kids
Speaker 1: off at Mount Meg's a few times, Denny began reporting
Speaker 1: what he'd seen to his superiors, including the head of
Speaker 1: the Montgomery Juvenile Court, judge William F. Thattford. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna send white boys to Mount Megs or Negro boys
Speaker 1: to the white schools at Birmingham. I have to stand
Speaker 1: for re election every year, and integration is not popular.
Speaker 1: That's voice actor Band Gunter, reading a quote that Thattford
Speaker 1: gave to a Montgomery paper judge. Thatford was many decades
Speaker 1: older than Denny, and he had a long history in
Speaker 1: the Alabama legal system. People remember him as a good
Speaker 1: old boy, respected by the powerful, perfectly comfortable in the
Speaker 1: status quo, and according to Denny, openly racist. He was
Speaker 1: a racist peer and simple, and he made no excuses
Speaker 1: for that. I remember one time he called all of
Speaker 1: us into his office for a staff meeting, and he said,
Speaker 1: if any of you ever refer to a black person
Speaker 1: as mister or missus in my courtroom, you're a fire.
Speaker 1: His racism, plus his interest in staying on the bench
Speaker 1: meant that Judge Thetford was entirely against integration. Billy Thetford
Speaker 1: was a law enforcement guy. He'd been an FBI agent
Speaker 1: and a prosecutor before becoming a judge. He'd been on
Speaker 1: the wrong side of history more than once. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, he prosecuted Martin Luther King Junior himself for
Speaker 1: violating a law that outlawed Boycott's. The year before that,
Speaker 1: he'd prosecuted fifteen year old Claudette Colvin after she refused
Speaker 1: to give up her seat on the bus to a
Speaker 1: white writer. Nine months before, Rosa Parks did the same.
Speaker 1: And this is how this is them allowed and even
Speaker 1: rewarded the cruelty of a place like Mount Meg's and
Speaker 1: much of the South. Good old boy attorneys like Judge
Speaker 1: Thetford were the law. They terrorized black people in the courtroom,
Speaker 1: often in the same order. Thetford did it first as prosecutor,
Speaker 1: then if they were lucky as judge, we were taught
Speaker 1: that judges are impartial, nonpartisan beings who strictly follow the law,
Speaker 1: whose only interest is getting it legally correct. But what's
Speaker 1: legally right and what is morally right are often at odds,
Speaker 1: and many times judges were more like Thetford, interested in
Speaker 1: maintaining power rather than ensuring justice. Denny knew Thetford well
Speaker 1: enough to know it was damn near impossible they did
Speaker 1: actually do anything to address the conditions at Mount Meg's,
Speaker 1: but Denny kept filing reports anyway. As a counselor in
Speaker 1: juvenile court, Denny kept a running log of complaints. He
Speaker 1: tried to document the physical abuses, the inadequate educational programs,
Speaker 1: and the myriad other issues at Mount Meg's that he'd
Speaker 1: witnessed or heard rumored. Sometimes he'd file another report with
Speaker 1: his superiors, but the reports he filed went nowhere. I
Speaker 1: was trying to get changes made, and of course nothing happened.
Speaker 1: This was the early sixties, smack in the middle of
Speaker 1: the growing civil rights movement. I saw the freedom bus
Speaker 1: riders come to Montgomery and get beat up. The march
Speaker 1: from Selmut to Montgomery, led by Doctor King and John
Speaker 1: Lewis and some others twenty five thousand marches came from
Speaker 1: Selmo to Montgomery. I was standing on the steps of
Speaker 1: the Captain of Montgomery when those marchers came in, and
Speaker 1: it was it's kind of all inspiring, actually to see
Speaker 1: that kind of coalition of people demanding justice and equal rights.
Speaker 1: But Montgomery was still Montgomery. Montgomery, Alabama, in the sixties
Speaker 1: was the most segregated place on the planet. One time,
Speaker 1: Denny invited one of his black co workers over for dinner.
Speaker 1: The neighbors saw him walk in my house and didn't
Speaker 1: like it at all and made some comments to me
Speaker 1: and my wife about having a black couple in our house.
Speaker 1: So it was that kind of ridiculous stuff that really
Speaker 1: painted Montgomery. It was a reflective of the general feeling
Speaker 1: of white people. We've been talking about Denny and his
Speaker 1: efforts to draw attention to the conditions at Mount Meg's,
Speaker 1: but it's worth noting that most of the time Denny
Speaker 1: just did his job like everyone else. Most days were normal,
Speaker 1: no complaints filed, no tension with the judge. As much
Speaker 1: as he wanted someone to address what was going on
Speaker 1: at Mount Meg's, he knew it would upset his ability
Speaker 1: to do his job. So he was constantly weighing what
Speaker 1: the best approach was. Again, this is Alabama in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. It's not clear that anyone in the criminal
Speaker 1: legal system would have been on Denny's side, and relative
Speaker 1: to the other employees, at least, Denny was powerless. A
Speaker 1: kid really just twenty one when he started his job,
Speaker 1: and for the most part, he liked the job. He
Speaker 1: also needed the job. Plus, Denny was good at his job.
Speaker 1: He was a hard worker who really cared about the kids.
Speaker 1: It was Denny who applied for program grants and started
Speaker 1: a tutoring program. It was Denny who talked to the press,
Speaker 1: providing some insight into the intense chaos that some of
Speaker 1: these children faced. In nineteen sixty three, at the age
Speaker 1: of twenty three, Denny got a promotion to chief probation Officer.
Speaker 1: That was the same year that doctor King reminded white
Speaker 1: Americans that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.
Speaker 1: As Chief Juvenile Probation Officer, Denny now had a little
Speaker 1: bit more power to make some changes. He doesn't go
Speaker 1: after Mount Meg's right away. While Mount Meg's was the
Speaker 1: worst of it in Alabama, there wasn't any good place
Speaker 1: to send kids who'd been accused of a crime, so
Speaker 1: Denny instead set his sights on the juvenile detention center.
Speaker 1: My office was like maybe ten steps from the doors
Speaker 1: to the detention center, and it was horrible. We were
Speaker 1: always overcrowded. We had nothing to provide kids. We had
Speaker 1: four large rooms, one large room for white boys, one
Speaker 1: large room for white girls on the other side, one
Speaker 1: large room for black boys, and one large room for
Speaker 1: black girls. And they were locked up in those rooms
Speaker 1: about twenty two hours a day. We had no staff
Speaker 1: to really supervise them. And we had a room in
Speaker 1: the middle of those drawing rooms that had a couple
Speaker 1: of chairs and that could come out and spend two
Speaker 1: or three hours a day in there. And that was it.
Speaker 1: Because the juvenile detention center was overcrowded, sometimes kids were
Speaker 1: sent upstairs to the adult detention center, where physical and
Speaker 1: sexual abuse was common. In the mid nineteen sixties, two
Speaker 1: boys alleged that they'd been left in a cell with
Speaker 1: several older men who burned them with cigarettes and matches,
Speaker 1: beat them, and raped them. In nineteen sixty seven, Denny
Speaker 1: finally got the leverage he needed to advocate for a
Speaker 1: new juvenile detention center. A local white attorney, I read dement,
Speaker 1: filed a lawsuit in behalf of a black teenage girl
Speaker 1: who'd been arrested for running away and was being held
Speaker 1: in the county courthouses juvenile jail. I had filed a
Speaker 1: petition for it of habeas call for some on behalf
Speaker 1: of a teenage female. This is Irah. She was a runaway,
Speaker 1: she was not delinquent, and she was placed in a
Speaker 1: room without any windows, and the electric light bub in
Speaker 1: the room on Friday afternoon went out and the maintenance
Speaker 1: people were not available until Monday morning, and so she
Speaker 1: had spent the weekend in the darkness. The lawsuit was
Speaker 1: ultimately rejected by Judge Thetford, who refused to even hear
Speaker 1: the case. But Denny, without Dufford's knowledge, used the attention
Speaker 1: brought by the lawsuit to build support for a new
Speaker 1: detention center. I want every church group, women's group, garden club,
Speaker 1: civic club that I could find, and I invited them
Speaker 1: to come down and see the facility. It's something I
Speaker 1: call impacting the senses. I wanted them to see what
Speaker 1: we were talking about. I wanted them to smell it.
Speaker 1: I wanted them to hear it. I wanted them to
Speaker 1: touch it, and I said, you know what, here's why
Speaker 1: I want you to see this, because you want it.
Speaker 1: This is a tax support facility. Everything you see here
Speaker 1: and what we're doing to kids, you're a part of it.
Speaker 1: Ginny's plan started to work. Pressure was put on the
Speaker 1: Montgomery County Commission to do something about the conditions at
Speaker 1: the juvenile detention center. They responded by putting the issue
Speaker 1: on the ballot, leaving it up to voters to decide
Speaker 1: whether the county should spend seven hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars on a new facility. Here we are, in the
Speaker 1: most conservative place on the planet, asking the voters to
Speaker 1: build something for link with kids. Yeah. I'm thinking, man,
Speaker 1: this is it's probably not going to work. That bond
Speaker 1: issue passed in Montgomery eight to one, and we've built
Speaker 1: a really nice new detention center that served kids well
Speaker 1: as for iver demense client, the runaway teenage girl, a
Speaker 1: spot opened up for her at Mount Meg's. I share
Speaker 1: the story about the detention center because it's a really
Speaker 1: great example of how entrenched the cruelty of juvenile justice
Speaker 1: really is. This was in the nineteen sixties of course,
Speaker 1: but the same dynamics exist even now. There are some
Speaker 1: real questions about what Denny's role was as a probation
Speaker 1: officer and what it should have been. Denny was law enforcement,
Speaker 1: and this is a reflection of one of the most
Speaker 1: consistent dynamics over time in the criminal legal system, the
Speaker 1: way we have to rely on law enforcement to fix
Speaker 1: problems that it created. There are bigger questions about the
Speaker 1: role of the law and our ability to create fundamental change.
Speaker 1: I must admit that as a concept, a really nice
Speaker 1: new detention center that serves kids, it makes me skeptical.
Speaker 1: On one hand, given the conditions of the old facility,
Speaker 1: it's good that something better was created, But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, the fundamental problem hadn't changed at all. We're
Speaker 1: still talking about a jail for children. This is a
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties during President Lyndon Johnson's War on Crime.
Speaker 1: We weren't yet at the levels of incarceration we'd see
Speaker 1: in the decades to come, but the signs were there,
Speaker 1: the narratives about humane lockups, for example, the insistence on
Speaker 1: more facilities instead of fewer arrests. But for Denny, the
Speaker 1: new detention center was a victory Meanwhile, Denny continued filing
Speaker 1: complaints about conditions and treatment at Mount Meg's, and his
Speaker 1: superiors continued to ignore him. Yet another year went by.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know. I'm a slow learner. I
Speaker 1: held on this notion of administrative help is coming. People
Speaker 1: are going to do something about it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: talked to high ranking officials and they all expressed concern.
Speaker 1: I'm not and I believe that they were going to
Speaker 1: do something. So I was naive in that regard. So
Speaker 1: I just kept hearing in these horror stories. And of
Speaker 1: course the most compelling thing I heard was five girls
Speaker 1: who had escaped from Mount Meg's came into my office
Speaker 1: and wanted to talk to me. The five girls he's
Speaker 1: talking about were Mary and her four companions, who in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight had run away and were promptly arrested
Speaker 1: and sent to the detention center. It was there that
Speaker 1: Mary insisted on talking to someone, anyone, to tell them
Speaker 1: about what was happening at Mount Meg's. After being caught
Speaker 1: and arrested. After running away from Mount Meg's, Mary and
Speaker 1: her four companions were taken to the Montgomery juve An
Speaker 1: Old Attention Center just to Florid, two away from Denny's office.
Speaker 1: We were wanting to speak with someone, you know, because
Speaker 1: we knew they were gonna send us back there, and
Speaker 1: we were not going I was I was not going
Speaker 1: back without telling somebody what was going on with me.
Speaker 1: So they told some of the staff that they wanted
Speaker 1: to see the boss, which was me at the time.
Speaker 1: I said sure, so I had them brought up to
Speaker 1: my office. I really didn't know why they wanted to
Speaker 1: see me. I had no idea what they were going
Speaker 1: to be telling me, and I wasn't surprised about what
Speaker 1: I heard because I knew it was going on. They've
Speaker 1: started telling me about the physical abuse, the sexual abuse
Speaker 1: that they endured, almost in a daily basis. One of
Speaker 1: the girls was hit in the head by a female
Speaker 1: staff number. She was injured so badly she had to
Speaker 1: go to the hospital. They told me about watching her
Speaker 1: girls beating so badly that she miscarried, and they were
Speaker 1: being sexually abused too by the male staff cards. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that it was already known, But after meeting Denny,
Speaker 1: we talked and told him what was going on there,
Speaker 1: which she already knew. But we were just crying and
Speaker 1: telling them how they were beaten us and what they
Speaker 1: were doing, and that we were not going back. That
Speaker 1: was the word, we are not going back. We were
Speaker 1: afraid to go back. We weren't going back because we
Speaker 1: knew we were going to be beaten. They had probably
Speaker 1: never asked a white person for help before. I think
Speaker 1: I might have been it, and I could see the
Speaker 1: fear in their eyes, and I knew they were uncomfortable
Speaker 1: telling me what they were telling me. But they had
Speaker 1: to do it. They had to tell someone, and they
Speaker 1: were very courageous. I'll never forget that what Mary and
Speaker 1: her friends did is one of the bravest things. I
Speaker 1: can imagine a black girl having the nerve to speak
Speaker 1: up about the abuse that she and hundreds of other
Speaker 1: kids were going through, and not just speak up, but
Speaker 1: speak up to someone like Denny, a powerful white guy
Speaker 1: in law enforcement. When we think back to this era
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixties the civil rights movement, a lot of
Speaker 1: weight is given to a couple of moments or events
Speaker 1: or people, But it took countless moments like these and
Speaker 1: people like Mary, people who never got recognition or accolades,
Speaker 1: to shift the winds even slightly in a place like Alabama.
Speaker 1: Dinny and the girl spoke for about forty five minutes
Speaker 1: before the five of them were returned to their holding cells.
Speaker 1: For years, Denny had been disturbed by the conditions at
Speaker 1: Mount Meg's, but now he had to decide if he
Speaker 1: was willing to go further this time. Your mind looks
Speaker 1: at a situation and it says, well, here's the problem.
Speaker 1: And then your mind says, okay, what can you do
Speaker 1: about it? And then you look at that, and then
Speaker 1: your mind says, if you do that, what's going to
Speaker 1: be the outcome. Is it going to make a difference.
Speaker 1: And then your mind says, okay, if you do that,
Speaker 1: and you think it'll make a difference, what are the
Speaker 1: repercussions for you and your family? The answer here might
Speaker 1: seem obvious. You do whatever you have to do to
Speaker 1: save the kids. But Denny's predicament is a great example
Speaker 1: of what I think of as the civil rights fallacy.
Speaker 1: People are born after the Civil rights movement like to
Speaker 1: imagine that they would have been on the front lines protesting, boycotting,
Speaker 1: crossing the bridge, and Salma, But the uncomfortable truth is
Speaker 1: that when push comes to shove, most people don't do
Speaker 1: those things. Because those things have costs. For someone like Denny,
Speaker 1: fighting the system meant professional and social repercussions, and not
Speaker 1: just for him, for his family. I went home after
Speaker 1: talking to those girls that day. My kids said at
Speaker 1: the time were six, five and three, and I'm went
Speaker 1: home and I saw them there in a good home
Speaker 1: of parents who loved him and cared about him, took
Speaker 1: care of them, and I said, you know what, I
Speaker 1: can't be the kind of father, can't be the kind
Speaker 1: of father to my own kids if I walk away
Speaker 1: from those girls. And I think the thing that kind
Speaker 1: of did it is that when your mind told you
Speaker 1: all those things, your heart was telling something else. Your
Speaker 1: heart is who you are, it's your core values, that's
Speaker 1: your system, it's what you believe, it's who you are.
Speaker 1: And I my heart said, you got to do something
Speaker 1: you can't walk away from. I would have regretted my
Speaker 1: entire life if I hadn't done something. So Denny was
Speaker 1: done filing complaints. He decided to take a bigger risk,
Speaker 1: one that would up end his life, and the next
Speaker 1: episode of Unreformed, Denny, Ira and five brave students begin
Speaker 1: the long road to desegregate Mount Meg's Unreformed. The Story
Speaker 1: of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children is a
Speaker 1: production of School of Humans and iHeartMedia. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Me, Josie Duffie, Rice, and Taylor von Laslie.
Speaker 1: Our script supervisor is Florence Burrow Adams, and our producer
Speaker 1: is Gabby Watts, who had additional writing and production support
Speaker 1: from Sherry Scott. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Chloley,
Speaker 1: Brandon Barr, Matt Arnette, and Me. Sound design and mix
Speaker 1: is by Jesse Niswanger. Music is by Ben Soley. Additional
Speaker 1: recordings are courtesy of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture.
Speaker 1: The song featured in this episode is all fly Away
Speaker 1: by Helen McLoud. William Thetford was voiced by Van Gunter.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the Alabama Department of Archives in History,
Speaker 1: Michael Harriet, Floyd Hall, Kevin Knutt, Van Newkirk, and all
Speaker 1: of the survivors of Mount Meg's willing to share their stories.
Speaker 1: If you are someone you know attended Mount Megs and
Speaker 1: would like to be in contact, please email Mountmegs Podcast
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. That's Mt m e Igs Podcast
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. School of Humans