Speaker 1: School of Humans. Please note that this podcast episode discusses
Speaker 1: historical events that include physical abuse against children. Please take
Speaker 1: care as you listen. For most, if not all, of
Speaker 1: Mount Megs existence, running away was a tradition born of necessity.
Speaker 1: We mentioned in the first episode that in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: two there had been a fire that destroyed many of
Speaker 1: the early records about Mount Megs. So it's hard to
Speaker 1: know just how many kids ran away in the school's infancy,
Speaker 1: but as far back as the nineteen twenties and thirties,
Speaker 1: children ran away regularly and sometimes successfully. In nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 1: sixteen of the three hundred and fifty students successfully escaped
Speaker 1: Mount Megs. By the next decade, that number had basically doubled.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen fifties and sixties, the Montgomery Advertiser, the
Speaker 1: local paper, regularly published stories alerting the community to runaways
Speaker 1: from Mount Megs. In fact, these notices made up a
Speaker 1: significant chunk of the local papers mentions of Mount Megs
Speaker 1: at all. Press about Mount Megs was mostly letting people
Speaker 1: know when the school had years of corn for sale.
Speaker 1: Her notice is about a lost mule or runaways. Six
Speaker 1: armed negroes escaped Mount Meg's Industrial School, read the headline
Speaker 1: of one such article. Another told of a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old Mount Meg's runaway believed to be behind the theft
Speaker 1: of several items cigars, cookies, and other knickknacks from a
Speaker 1: candy store. Despite the very real and very corporal consequences
Speaker 1: if caught, kids ran away from the Alabama Industrial School
Speaker 1: for Negro Children all the time in the years after
Speaker 1: the state took over. In fact, many of them ran
Speaker 1: away over and over and over again, kept escaping even
Speaker 1: if they didn't get too far. In one story, the
Speaker 1: Alabama Journal mentioned two boys, Willie, who had allegedly tried
Speaker 1: to escape Mount Meg's five times and Leonard, who had
Speaker 1: tried to run away ten times. Every former resident we
Speaker 1: talked to for this podcast has a story about running
Speaker 1: away from Mount Meg's. And the one thing all of
Speaker 1: these stories have in common is this the belief that
Speaker 1: life as a teenage fugitive was better than life as
Speaker 1: a quote unquote student at Mount Meg's, even knowing what
Speaker 1: would happen if they were caught. I'm Josie Duffie Rice,
Speaker 1: and this is unreformed. The Story of the Alabama Industrial
Speaker 1: School for Negro Children, Episode four the runaways. By all accounts,
Speaker 1: the punishment for running away could be even more brutal
Speaker 1: than the day to day violence. Bloodhounds would chase after you,
Speaker 1: and if they caught you, they'd bite and wouldn't let go.
Speaker 1: Chargeboys were once exemplary students, trusted with more responsibility by
Speaker 1: the superintendent, but by the nineteen sixties the job had
Speaker 1: been corrupted. They'd become henchmen for the administrators, granted permission
Speaker 1: to terrorize other students, and they'd also join the hunt
Speaker 1: for runaways. Johnny Body was both prey and witness to
Speaker 1: such hunts. This is the worst for automatic. They would
Speaker 1: make a charing boy beat you. They'd almost damn near
Speaker 1: killed you, and they bring you back this like that
Speaker 1: for every matter to sing and they put your own display,
Speaker 1: which is what happened to Jenny Knox. Jenny was serving
Speaker 1: her second sentence at Mount Meg's. After she got out
Speaker 1: the first time, she was put in the care of
Speaker 1: her sister, but they had a contentious relationship, and so
Speaker 1: the sister called up the justic attorney and asked them
Speaker 1: to take Jenny back. She called him and told him
Speaker 1: that she couldn't do anything with me but to come
Speaker 1: take me back down to Mount Maids, and I was
Speaker 1: looking for that black car man. I recognized that black car,
Speaker 1: and I recognized them two faces in up front, and
Speaker 1: they came to get me out for her porch. When
Speaker 1: the juvenile probation officers arrived, Jenny was able to evade
Speaker 1: them in a cat and mouse chase, and she outsmarted
Speaker 1: them by diving into some tall grass behind the nearby house.
Speaker 1: She knew they wouldn't look there, and that's where I stayed.
Speaker 1: I didn't know of no snakes and none that I
Speaker 1: wasn't scared. Jenny stayed in that tall grass for hours.
Speaker 1: It started getting dart and then I came out and
Speaker 1: it's okay, free alas free Las, thank god online. But
Speaker 1: Jenny's freedom was short lived. Eventually they caught me the
Speaker 1: second time. When Jenny was in the back of the
Speaker 1: probation officer's black car, she knew what type of hell
Speaker 1: was awaiting her at Mount Meg's. This time, she wasn't
Speaker 1: the naive thirteen year old confused right she was being
Speaker 1: sent away given that, as she saw it, she had
Speaker 1: done nothing wrong. Jenny was now fifteen years old, and
Speaker 1: she was returning to the devil she knew, so they
Speaker 1: considered as being a two timers. So I was a
Speaker 1: two timers and nothing had gotten no better. Jenny had
Speaker 1: no intention of staying at Mount Meg's. That tried to
Speaker 1: run away from out there, and in I trying to
Speaker 1: run away, Me and another lady got into some serious
Speaker 1: trouble when they end up putting us in a straight
Speaker 1: jacket and we had to stand up and dining room.
Speaker 1: Why everybody else was sitting out eating and we couldn't
Speaker 1: eat anything because we were in white. For the way,
Speaker 1: if they were caught running away or labeled troublemakers, kids
Speaker 1: had to wear white clothing. It was a mark of
Speaker 1: shame so that these kids could be easily identified among
Speaker 1: the masses of kids and army fatigues. They put you
Speaker 1: in white, and a lot of times just by you
Speaker 1: being in white, you would lock away from the other boys.
Speaker 1: They will give you a white a big white jumpsuit.
Speaker 1: They never watched it, so the white soup became almost
Speaker 1: black before you got out of white. White means no privileges.
Speaker 1: Mary's responsibilities as head dormitory girl led to more scrutiny
Speaker 1: and punishment from Fanny, and she had already sustained a
Speaker 1: terrible injury from one of Fanny's beatings. She had hit
Speaker 1: me in the hair with a bottle in My head
Speaker 1: was swollen. Mary had to go to the hospital and
Speaker 1: Fanny she would make me stay on the stairs. People
Speaker 1: couldn't see me ahead to stand the stairs in the
Speaker 1: closet during the day so I wouldn't be seeing. I ran.
Speaker 1: I ran and ran, and ran, and ran and ran.
Speaker 1: When Lonnie ran away, he'd been at Mount Meg's about
Speaker 1: a year. It was nineteen sixty two and he was
Speaker 1: twelve years old. He was out in the fields with
Speaker 1: a group of other boys pulling up cornstocks, and he
Speaker 1: needed to go to the bathroom. Now, you were lucky
Speaker 1: if mister Glover let you use the bathroom. Sometimes, even
Speaker 1: if he did, he'd make a charge boy supervise, and
Speaker 1: that could lead to physical and sexual abuse. If you
Speaker 1: were given the permission to go, you were supposed to
Speaker 1: make it quick. Run to the woods, do your business,
Speaker 1: and come right back. But Lonnie looked out that day
Speaker 1: mister Glover allowed him to take a bathroom break in
Speaker 1: the woods alone, and while he was gone, the group
Speaker 1: moved on to another spot, leaving him behind. I had
Speaker 1: no intention of running away, but they're longer. I stooped down.
Speaker 1: They kept moving up the field, so I was like
Speaker 1: a rabbit. I just dumped there and stayed there. And
Speaker 1: they kept moving up the field so rapidly. They went
Speaker 1: over this bluff. You can hardly see their head. And
Speaker 1: that's when I started backing up. And I backed up,
Speaker 1: and I kept backing up, raising my body up, graightening up.
Speaker 1: I didn't see nobody pulling my clothes up, fasten them up,
Speaker 1: army tight, not turn around, And I started running behind money.
Speaker 1: It was a barbed wire fence that separated a cornfield
Speaker 1: from the pecan orchards. He jumped a fence and dashed
Speaker 1: across the orchards, which turned out to be kind of dangerous.
Speaker 1: Train through the bride and a stick of bushes and
Speaker 1: all the other things that within the perimedy. Around the
Speaker 1: Alabama Industrial School, they had man made pawn. If you
Speaker 1: wasn't careful, you'll fall off into one of them and
Speaker 1: you're drowned and nobody never know you were on them. Still,
Speaker 1: Lonnie ran ram ram ram ram ram ram ram ran
Speaker 1: nobody something all body midt now just rain. Lonnie ran
Speaker 1: with no idea where he was or where he was.
Speaker 1: Headache back of a muffling around ten a levemo of tide,
Speaker 1: and I ran and I didn't know where. I woke
Speaker 1: as a dog, and I fell into this hole, and
Speaker 1: that's where I went to sleep. I slepped down in there.
Speaker 1: Didn't know of no snakes or nothing was in it.
Speaker 1: Lonnie's luck held. No snakes bothered him while he slept,
Speaker 1: and he woke up early the next morning at sunrise,
Speaker 1: took the sound of roosters and birds chirping. He took
Speaker 1: a look around. I clambed up out of the grave
Speaker 1: right a roof at at three and then that's when
Speaker 1: I looked around and I saw a real old tombstone.
Speaker 1: He realized the sleeping spot was right next to a cemetery.
Speaker 1: He kept running and soon found the highway. He ran
Speaker 1: alongside it to avoid detection. His oversized hand me down
Speaker 1: military fatigues would have been a red flag to any
Speaker 1: passer by that he was a mountains escapee, so he
Speaker 1: ran in the ditches like all those times in Birmingham. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Lonnie came to what he called a tractor place. He's
Speaker 1: referring to a farm all show room where they sold tractors.
Speaker 1: As he was scoping out the place, he looked into
Speaker 1: a window in spite a can of sardines. So I
Speaker 1: took my elbow because I had on long sleeve, and
Speaker 1: I took my elbow and knocked out one of the
Speaker 1: window and went into the farmall tractor play and opened
Speaker 1: the frigerated. It was some cheene cracker, A cold drank,
Speaker 1: and I sat down and I ate my belletfool, because
Speaker 1: I was tired. I feel it's leap. Lonnie was exhausted.
Speaker 1: He didn't know it at the time, but he traveled
Speaker 1: more than twenty five miles on foot in less than
Speaker 1: twenty four hours, almost all the way to Tuskegee. But
Speaker 1: he didn't get to sleep for long. The next thing
Speaker 1: I know, the man that owned the track of play.
Speaker 1: He was a white man, be white man, grabman mccaullo.
Speaker 1: The man had Lonnie in a bind yelling at him.
Speaker 1: He got you tightly griped, and then he took his
Speaker 1: fist and knocked me out. I mean literally knocked me unconscious.
Speaker 1: Lonnie was knocked out on the floor of the tractor place.
Speaker 1: When he came to, his bleary eyes made out the
Speaker 1: image of someone who wasn't there before, someone he didn't
Speaker 1: want to see. Next thing I know, somebody flapping me
Speaker 1: in my place, Holland Dolan. Why did you run away?
Speaker 1: Why did you run away? It was Superintendent Eb Holloway.
Speaker 1: He took it fish and showing the white man he
Speaker 1: could knock me out. And he took and knocked me
Speaker 1: out again. Two grown men punching a child unconscious. The
Speaker 1: next time Lonnie woke, he was back at Mount Meg's,
Speaker 1: on the floor of the cottage for solitary confinement. He
Speaker 1: was held there for a day, which he spent nursing
Speaker 1: his head. Part of the misery of being in that
Speaker 1: cottage was the apprehension just waiting for the brutal punishment
Speaker 1: that was to come in the morning. And next thing
Speaker 1: I knew were a chigboys coming to the sale and
Speaker 1: taking me out of sale, ultimate by both arms, taking
Speaker 1: me down to this big cedar tree. Now forget below
Speaker 1: the cedar tree was a bench also made of cedar.
Speaker 1: Your arm was cooking, wrapped around the tree and tied
Speaker 1: around the tree like you hooking the tree, and your
Speaker 1: back leg was tied to the bench. And this was
Speaker 1: going to be a public spectacle. So all of the
Speaker 1: girls from the girl's home and brought down the boys
Speaker 1: from the boy's home, all of them. They're brought down
Speaker 1: every boy, everybody mist the Holloway shout out the dollar,
Speaker 1: why you want to run away? And then you look around.
Speaker 1: He said, who you wanted to whoop you? You want
Speaker 1: me to ready to make you drunk? I'm at the
Speaker 1: Glover to make you sick. So I had ran away
Speaker 1: from mister Glover, so I chose at the Glover to
Speaker 1: whoop me. Mister Holloway gave orders for the beating to start.
Speaker 1: The amount of licks that he told him marked the
Speaker 1: glove of a hit me, and he's like, shoot him
Speaker 1: a hunting in fifth, I mean hit you a hunting
Speaker 1: in fifty times. He was hitting Lonnie with a fan
Speaker 1: belt on his bare legs. So he hit you right
Speaker 1: in the back of your head and knocked you out cold.
Speaker 1: So that's the third time I don't be known got
Speaker 1: knocked out. The beating was so violent that mister Glover
Speaker 1: he didn't know whether he had killed me or not.
Speaker 1: When Lonnie came to next, blood was dripping down his legs,
Speaker 1: running down into his socks. They dressed him in white.
Speaker 1: A deep x was shaved into his hair, another mark
Speaker 1: of a runaway. They took away his shoes and then
Speaker 1: he was thrown onto the rock. The rock pile was
Speaker 1: the most infamous torture site on the Mountain's campus. It's
Speaker 1: a big old circle of nothing but a pile of boone.
Speaker 1: And they were whitewashed. All of them were whitewater. The
Speaker 1: trees all around them there was rock that had been
Speaker 1: jug when you clear the feed, and they brought brought
Speaker 1: to the central location powder and whitewashed beautifully white. It's often,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like in this big, this big yard,
Speaker 1: in all of this dirty and all these big, these
Speaker 1: big square rocks painted white. I'm saying you had to
Speaker 1: beat undid something real, real bad for you to go
Speaker 1: on the rock pile. You on the rock pile, You
Speaker 1: are an example. Once condemned to the rock pile, you
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to leave. The only places you could go
Speaker 1: were to the kitchen to sleep, into the chapel on
Speaker 1: Sundays if you could muster the strength. Otherwise you were
Speaker 1: stuck there. You couldn't even leave to use the bathroom.
Speaker 1: You on the rock pile day and night rang sleep
Speaker 1: pale of snow. If you went out of the circuit,
Speaker 1: it would beat it. You know. The rock pod was brutal.
Speaker 1: On the rock pile, the boys in white were ostracized
Speaker 1: from everyone else, and there was even more violence between
Speaker 1: them because there was nothing else to do except sit
Speaker 1: there or move some rocks around. It was just them
Speaker 1: and the elements and the rocks. You know. I was
Speaker 1: sitting in the rock pod once on a rock came
Speaker 1: in and hit me in the face, you know, almost
Speaker 1: knocked my out, And thought about two fifteen years after
Speaker 1: that when out here and when I get out of
Speaker 1: Mount Me, I used to walk around like this, yere,
Speaker 1: Johnny's holding his hands up in front of his eyes,
Speaker 1: like expecting a rock to come from anywhere. Lonnie figured
Speaker 1: he might very well end up dying on the rock pile,
Speaker 1: and he thought no one would notice or care. I
Speaker 1: remember every time that I would touch the back of
Speaker 1: my thighs and my leg or one day pull the
Speaker 1: different clothes off of me, they just ripped it off
Speaker 1: of me and so that exposed it. There's soul that
Speaker 1: was on me, and they just stopped bleeding all over again.
Speaker 1: But they beating me to the print that I couldn't
Speaker 1: even walk. I couldn't do nothing but crowl Even now,
Speaker 1: he remembers his blood dripping onto the white rocks. The
Speaker 1: days turned two weeks, and the weeks turned two months.
Speaker 1: According to Lonnie, eighteen months later, he was still on
Speaker 1: the rock pile. I asked him at the Holloway every
Speaker 1: day for a year and a half, when you're gonna
Speaker 1: let me off the rock pile. Lonnie created a sculpture
Speaker 1: called Blood on the Rock Pile in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: and when I met him earlier this year, I asked
Speaker 1: him about it. So sure, up took clay and red
Speaker 1: paint and mix it up like my blood in the clay,
Speaker 1: white washed the rocks, and I took wires. I wanted
Speaker 1: to buy that situation up so tight. I wanted to
Speaker 1: rid myself that experience, but I can't. I gave whoopings
Speaker 1: in my sleep about it. The rock pile still haunts
Speaker 1: Lonnie to this day. I've often caught myself in that
Speaker 1: state of being, in my dreams, of asking when are
Speaker 1: you going to let me off the rock pile? As
Speaker 1: Lonnie tells it, Holloway finally led him off the rock
Speaker 1: pile months later and I asked them and the next
Speaker 1: thing I know, it was taking me down In one day.
Speaker 1: It was my time to come off the rock pile.
Speaker 1: Lonnie didn't try to run away again. Often it wasn't
Speaker 1: only the kids who wanted to get away from Mount Meg's.
Speaker 1: Their parents wanted them home too. We have a document
Speaker 1: from school administrators that was given to parents and what
Speaker 1: we think was the late nineteen sixties or so, and
Speaker 1: it says the purpose of this institution is to train
Speaker 1: and reclaim delinquent girls and boys of Alabama by giving
Speaker 1: them spiritual, academic, and vocational experience, and by teaching them
Speaker 1: to live wholesome lives in their communities. And then in
Speaker 1: all caps, the document says it is not a prison,
Speaker 1: but many parents knew otherwise. We found letters and the
Speaker 1: state archives written to the governor from parents begging for
Speaker 1: their children's release. None of them had any idea when
Speaker 1: their children were coming home. And though they didn't know
Speaker 1: much about what was happening to their kids at Mount Meg's,
Speaker 1: they knew enough to be scared. Here's one from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight to Governor Lorline Wallace, George Wallace's wife. She
Speaker 1: became governor of Alabama in nineteen sixty seven, right after
Speaker 1: her husband's first term. The mother writing to her is
Speaker 1: talking about her son, Gregory. He has been on Mount
Speaker 1: Meg's for eighteen months. She says, Gregory is my baby son.
Speaker 1: I would like for him to come home. I believe
Speaker 1: he has learned a lesson. He was born with the
Speaker 1: deformity right side. He is not a bad boy. It
Speaker 1: was mostly the neighborhood that I was living in at
Speaker 1: the time. If there is any way possible you can
Speaker 1: help me get my son home, I will thank you
Speaker 1: from the bottom of my heart. You are a mother,
Speaker 1: and I know you know how a mother feels about
Speaker 1: her child. I want my son home, please please. Once
Speaker 1: a month, parents could come visit Mount Meg's, but according
Speaker 1: to the letters, the visits were closely supervised, making it difficult,
Speaker 1: if not impossible, for children to tell their parents what
Speaker 1: was really going on. One letter says when the parents
Speaker 1: go to visit them, they can't sit down and talk
Speaker 1: with them without someone sitting in their presence. They're afraid
Speaker 1: to talk. In the nineteen forties, one mother, Corinne Hill,
Speaker 1: filed a habeas petition in court saying her child was
Speaker 1: being unlawfully detained, and the court agreed, ruling that her
Speaker 1: son was entitled to be seen by a judge, but
Speaker 1: that didn't change the process. At Mount Meg's, kids were
Speaker 1: still detained indefinitely, often without so much as a hearing.
Speaker 1: And the reason that these parents couldn't get any attention,
Speaker 1: any response, any recourse, was obvious. It was because they
Speaker 1: were black. Here's an excerpt from one letter that we found.
Speaker 1: I honestly feel that my son's present situation is the
Speaker 1: result of prejudice on the judge's part and the fact
Speaker 1: that he was a victim of circumstances. I've exhausted all
Speaker 1: means of trying to help him there, but it seems
Speaker 1: that there's a minority here that must accept whatever decisions
Speaker 1: are made, whether they represent justice or not. When I
Speaker 1: was researching Mount Megs, this was one of the hardest
Speaker 1: parts for me as the black parent of young kids.
Speaker 1: This idea that your children can be taken by the
Speaker 1: state and there's nothing you can do but beg it's
Speaker 1: hard to grapple with. In one nineteen sixty eight letter,
Speaker 1: a desperate mother tells the governor that she knows the
Speaker 1: kids are being mistreated. They beat them with a stick.
Speaker 1: She says they don't have nice clothing to wear, and
Speaker 1: she talks about how they're starving. They have corn bread
Speaker 1: and syrup and peanut butter for breakfast. Mister eb Holloway
Speaker 1: is stealing their food. She tells the governor that the
Speaker 1: men who watch over the boys are beating all sides
Speaker 1: of their heads. She asks, will you please do something
Speaker 1: about it. Here's another letter from a parent from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine, written to the governor. The children are having
Speaker 1: a hard time. It says, these children work in the fields.
Speaker 1: He tells the governor he doesn't believe he knows how
Speaker 1: bad it is, or else he would do something about it.
Speaker 1: The letter continues, I don't believe the men and women
Speaker 1: in prison have such a hard time. Please please look
Speaker 1: into this matter. Mostly these parents were either ignored or
Speaker 1: given the run around. The governor's office would often refer
Speaker 1: them back to Mount Meg's. We don't have many records
Speaker 1: of Mount Megs's response to stuff like this, but we
Speaker 1: have one record where eb Holloway himself wrote back. We
Speaker 1: don't have the original letter from the parent, only Holloway's
Speaker 1: letter in response. In it, he wrote, we wish to
Speaker 1: assure you that William is not receiving any inhumane treatment
Speaker 1: nor injustice, but he is fortunate to be receiving a
Speaker 1: type of training that he did not receive at home.
Speaker 1: Holloway concluded by saying, you may be assured that as
Speaker 1: soon as the staff feels that William has received the
Speaker 1: maximum benefit, we shall be happy to recommend him for release.
Speaker 1: But despite Holloway's insistence that Mount Megs was doing a
Speaker 1: better job at raising the kids than their parents, the
Speaker 1: constant stream of runaways indicated otherwise. I was tired and
Speaker 1: scared and just didn't want to take it anymore. It's
Speaker 1: November nineteen sixty eight and Mary Stevens has been at
Speaker 1: Mount Megs for about a year. She was constantly wearing white.
Speaker 1: Fannie Matthews had already given her that brutal beating that
Speaker 1: sent her to the hospital, and she had already attempted
Speaker 1: to run away once. But then a new girl arrived
Speaker 1: at Mount Meg's, and there was a girl that came
Speaker 1: to stay at Mount Megs that really wasn't afraid of them,
Speaker 1: because she was there for either attempting to kill somebody
Speaker 1: or killing someone possible murder or not. Mary and the
Speaker 1: new girl became friends, Mary admired her bravery. She remembers
Speaker 1: the new girl wasn't afraid she'd take a beating from
Speaker 1: Fanny and look her dead in the eyes while it
Speaker 1: was happening. It was the new girl who had the idea.
Speaker 1: One day, Mary and four other girls were working together
Speaker 1: in the fields around Mount Meg's and the new girls
Speaker 1: said they should run, and this escape would change everything. Unreformed.
Speaker 1: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children
Speaker 1: is a production of School of Humans and iHeartMedia. This
Speaker 1: episode was written by Me, Josie Deffie, Rice, and Taylor
Speaker 1: von Laslie. Our scoop supervisors Florence Burrow Adams, and our
Speaker 1: producer is Gabby Watts, who had additional writing and production
Speaker 1: support from Sherry Scott. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley,
Speaker 1: Brandon Barr met Urnette, and Me. Sound design and mixes
Speaker 1: by Jesse Niswanger. Music is by Ben Soli. Additional recordings
Speaker 1: our courtesy of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture. Special
Speaker 1: things to the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Michael Harriet,
Speaker 1: Floyd Hall, Kevin Nutt, Van Newkirk, and all of the
Speaker 1: survivors of Mount Meg's willing to share their stories. If
Speaker 1: you are someone you know attended Mount Megs and would
Speaker 1: like to be in contact, please email Mountmegs podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. That's Mt M e i g S
Speaker 1: Podcast at gmail dot com. School of Humans