Speaker 1: School of Humans. So remember back in episode one, at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this series, I talked about driving to
Speaker 1: Mount Meg's last July, about trying to get in the
Speaker 1: front gate, more than fifty years after Jenny, Johnny, Lonnie, Mary,
Speaker 1: Johnny Mack, and Jesse James Andrews had left. This was
Speaker 1: always a project about Mount Meg's back then rather than now.
Speaker 1: But the more I looked into the institution's history, the
Speaker 1: more I wanted to know what it was like today,
Speaker 1: had it improved or had the lawsuit been a false
Speaker 1: positive a promise that never manifested. For more than a year,
Speaker 1: we tried over and over to get access to Mount Meg's,
Speaker 1: not only for reporting purposes, but because Johnny, Mary, Jenny,
Speaker 1: and Lonnie all expressed interest in seeing what it was
Speaker 1: like now. We called, emailed, asked anyone who we thought
Speaker 1: might be able to get us in, but they denied us,
Speaker 1: giving us various excuses. They were understaffed, there were COVID restrictions,
Speaker 1: it was too close to the holidays. They even turned
Speaker 1: down Denny, a former law enforcement officer. We really don't
Speaker 1: ever give tours to begin with, a staff person at
Speaker 1: the Department of Youth Services wrote instead, she just sent
Speaker 1: us some newsletters and a YouTube link to a video,
Speaker 1: writing that maybe these would, as she said, provide them
Speaker 1: some hope that things have changed and continue to change
Speaker 1: for the better. So instead, I just decided to show
Speaker 1: up to see as much of the place as I could. Hi,
Speaker 1: I've been working on a project about the Mount Megs
Speaker 1: and the sixties, and I was just hoping I could
Speaker 1: see the campus. Is there a way we could just
Speaker 1: drive around it? Since the series started airing, we've finally
Speaker 1: gotten a more positive response to our request to visit
Speaker 1: from the administrators at Mount Meg's. In mid February, an
Speaker 1: official from the Alabama Department of Youth Services responded to
Speaker 1: an email sent from a member of Lonnie's team. The
Speaker 1: officials said they were open to discussing a visit from
Speaker 1: former residence in the near future, but added that they
Speaker 1: would like to listen to the entire series before scheduling
Speaker 1: a specific time. In this episode, the last of the series,
Speaker 1: we look at where Lonnie, Mary, Johnny, Jenny, and Denny
Speaker 1: are fifty years after leaving Mount Megs. We also look
Speaker 1: at how juvenile justice in America has evolved and how
Speaker 1: other juvenile reform schools that mistreated their students have atoned
Speaker 1: for their wrongs. And lastly, we get a glimpse into
Speaker 1: the current state of Mount Meg's. Has it changed or
Speaker 1: is it the same place it was more than fifty
Speaker 1: years ago. The feedback that I get from my clients
Speaker 1: while at Mount Meg's is, I think exactly what one
Speaker 1: would expect it to be. The worst case scenario would
Speaker 1: be death, and Mount Meg's would be immediately under that.
Speaker 1: I'm Josie Duffie Rice. This is Unreformed the Story of
Speaker 1: the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, Episode eight, Searching
Speaker 1: for Justice. Over the past year, I've thought more and
Speaker 1: more about what justice would look like here. What would
Speaker 1: justice look like for Lonnie, Mary, Jenny and Johnny. What
Speaker 1: would it look like for all the students of Mount Meg's,
Speaker 1: including the ones they today? What would it look like
Speaker 1: for Jesse, James Andrews or Johnny mac young or the
Speaker 1: people that they hurt? Is justice even possible? One of
Speaker 1: the things that blew my mind is the fact that
Speaker 1: none of the survivors we spoke to even knew about
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty nine lawsuit until decades later. They'd been
Speaker 1: victimized by this institution, but once they were gone, they
Speaker 1: were gone. There was no follow up, no accounting, no
Speaker 1: remorse from the state of Alabama. And it goes without
Speaker 1: saying that they didn't get any relief. They didn't get
Speaker 1: settlement money or anything. They didn't even get an apology.
Speaker 1: They all left Mount Megs and were tossed out to
Speaker 1: fend for themselves, and they're still paying for it. Half
Speaker 1: a century later. In twenty twelve, Mary was at her
Speaker 1: home in Chattanooga, sitting across from an investigator from N's
Speaker 1: Child Protective Services. Her own children had grown up and
Speaker 1: she wanted to become a foster parent. She was nervous
Speaker 1: because there was something standing in her way, her criminal record,
Speaker 1: specifically the year and a half she had spent at
Speaker 1: Mount Meg's. It turned out that it was not going
Speaker 1: to be an issue. Instead, this meeting connected Mary was
Speaker 1: someone she hadn't seen since she was a child. The
Speaker 1: investigator for Department Children's Services did my investigation to be
Speaker 1: in the foster parenty system, and I told her about
Speaker 1: my state at Alabam in Destri School. She said, you
Speaker 1: know there's a book out about the school. I said,
Speaker 1: what that book was? They had no voice By whistleblower
Speaker 1: Denny Abbott and his co author Douglas Collegian. I hadn't
Speaker 1: forgotten about Danny, you know. At the end of the
Speaker 1: meeting at Mary's, the investigator gave her Denny's name and
Speaker 1: phone number. As soon as she lived at called Denny.
Speaker 1: That call in twenty twelve was the first time Mary
Speaker 1: had talked to Denny since she and other runaways for
Speaker 1: Mount Meg's pleaded for his help at the Montgomery Juvenile
Speaker 1: Detention Center forty five years prior after I got fired.
Speaker 1: After we file the suits, it took me almost a
Speaker 1: year to find meaningful employment, and then at the end
Speaker 1: of that year we had to borrow money against our
Speaker 1: life and chaerance policy to parabills. I got a call
Speaker 1: from O. J. Keller, who was setting up a division
Speaker 1: a few services that had already done it in state Florida,
Speaker 1: and he called me and he said, we have an opening.
Speaker 1: Would you like to be the regional detention director for
Speaker 1: South Florida? And I said absolutely, I'll be there tomorrow.
Speaker 1: They finally saw each other for the first time in
Speaker 1: decades when Denny gave a talk about his book at
Speaker 1: the Rosa Parks Library and Montgomery. Their reunion was cut
Speaker 1: briefly on video. Great Mary is with a group of women,
Speaker 1: also survivors of Mount Meg's. Denny hugs each of them,
Speaker 1: but you can tell he shares a special connection with Mary.
Speaker 1: Letter tears and I thanked him for helping me and
Speaker 1: for me getting out of being able to leave, for
Speaker 1: not being killed. He's more than a friend. I look
Speaker 1: up to him lis at the Bigger Household because of
Speaker 1: his care and the way he felt about children and me.
Speaker 1: Mary Stevens was always looking for a family. She grew
Speaker 1: up in an unstable household, and when she first arrived
Speaker 1: at Mount Meg's, she hoped that Fanny Matthew was going
Speaker 1: to adopt her, but in some ways, that feeling of
Speaker 1: family safety always eluded her. After she was released from
Speaker 1: Mount Meg's, she was plagued by instability once again. Would
Speaker 1: I left Alabama? Sent me right back to the same
Speaker 1: foster home birthplaces? I got right. My brothers and sisters
Speaker 1: were there. I left the foster home, got married, had
Speaker 1: a baby at nineteen. But while she tried to build
Speaker 1: the family she always wanted her brothers and sisters were
Speaker 1: left behind. I know they will be a beat for
Speaker 1: the raise of strap and so Mary did something bold, risky.
Speaker 1: I stole my brothers and sisters from that boster who
Speaker 1: It was a crazy idea, one that if things went wrong,
Speaker 1: could have resulted in her child being taken from her,
Speaker 1: but Mary did it anyway. I told my brother when
Speaker 1: I was coming for him to be ready, one brother
Speaker 1: and two sisters. I was scared. I was so scared.
Speaker 1: It was scared. Police go to be behind me, had
Speaker 1: my brother looking out who was speeding. We're probably gotten
Speaker 1: stopped for speeding. Fast is that we got stopped for
Speaker 1: stolen children. Mary and her siblings made it across the
Speaker 1: state line to Tennessee. By that time, Mary had already
Speaker 1: left her husband, so she was a young single mother
Speaker 1: trying to take care of her child and her siblings.
Speaker 1: She struggled to make ends meet. When I got them
Speaker 1: to Tennessee, I couldn't take care of them. I was
Speaker 1: making a dollar sixty see an hour or make the
Speaker 1: police department as a dispatch. I had a child, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't get any help for little brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: So they hated at boor to TPSS Tennessee Preparatory School.
Speaker 1: But it was nothing like not for Mary. Her life
Speaker 1: as an adult wasn't always easy, but it was better
Speaker 1: than her childhood. She remarried, had more children, divorced again.
Speaker 1: She built a career as an insurance agent. But in
Speaker 1: recent years Mary was called to something else, foster parenting.
Speaker 1: I think Matt Mags had like to do that. After
Speaker 1: I divorced and new that I wanted to do something good,
Speaker 1: so I started to post at home. When they came
Speaker 1: into my house, they were calling me miss Mary. I
Speaker 1: told them you can call me what everyone. You don't
Speaker 1: have to call me miss Mary. And I explained to
Speaker 1: him how much I loved them and cared for him,
Speaker 1: and you know, thank you was Nana. Mary showed us
Speaker 1: a property behind her house. She used to own three
Speaker 1: lots but ended up selling them off. Actually I wanted
Speaker 1: to start a school. That's why I had these three lots.
Speaker 1: I wanted to school. But I got sick and I
Speaker 1: got to have back surgery again. So I was diagnosed
Speaker 1: with room toward authors in nineteen eighty eight. I came
Speaker 1: home in seventy so I've been dealing with this since
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight and worse. You know, five row miles
Speaker 1: the genitive discs deteriorating and stuff. We found that this
Speaker 1: is true for a lot of survivors of Mount Mags.
Speaker 1: There are permanent injuries that started young, often in the back.
Speaker 1: Let's still have the disability in my bag where I
Speaker 1: can't sit very long or stand very long. Here's any
Speaker 1: knocks from the outside. Jenny appears to have a sense
Speaker 1: of serenity with her family photos and the Bible collection
Speaker 1: at her Montgomery home, but the years following her release
Speaker 1: from Mount Mags were rough. I came home and I've
Speaker 1: been stuck ever since, from the time I left My
Speaker 1: Mags until my adulthood, just feeling stagnated, mentally stagnated. After
Speaker 1: Mount Mags, Jenny moved to Atlanta, where she worked as
Speaker 1: a nanny. She found herself in and out of tumultuous relationships,
Speaker 1: and eventually she moved back to Montgomery. I think I
Speaker 1: came out with lots of anger emmy, lots of hurt.
Speaker 1: I was troubled, I was confused, I didn't know who
Speaker 1: to trust. I just hung out by myself a lot
Speaker 1: of times because I didn't think nobody would really care
Speaker 1: or would really understand what I had gone through, or
Speaker 1: maybe I didn't understand you know, life itself, having most
Speaker 1: of my teenage years taken away from me, and I
Speaker 1: think it was when I gave my life to Christ
Speaker 1: in eighty three when I really feel like releasing away.
Speaker 1: Jenny got saved in nineteen eighty three and ordained in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, and ever since then she's been intimately
Speaker 1: involved with her church. It was her pastor and his
Speaker 1: wife who were the first people she was able to
Speaker 1: open up to about Mount Meg's. I sat down and
Speaker 1: talked to my pastor's wife first, and then that encouraged
Speaker 1: me to just go forward and talk about it. Both
Speaker 1: Jenny and Mary said they haven't talked about what they
Speaker 1: went throughout Mount Meg's with many people, even family. Miss
Speaker 1: Matthews had already told us that no matter who we
Speaker 1: talked today, wasn't going to believe us, and you know
Speaker 1: from the start, and so I guess it has settled
Speaker 1: in my mind, you know, what's the use of trying
Speaker 1: to tell anybody anything about it? And then I didn't
Speaker 1: think my family would really understand, so I just kept
Speaker 1: it held me in. Mary such something similar. I've tried
Speaker 1: to talk to my daughter about it. She thinks just
Speaker 1: because I stayed out of school. I just didn't want
Speaker 1: to go to school. This reason I had to go away,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't I've tried to explain too of the
Speaker 1: childhood that we had. And this is something that you
Speaker 1: don't talk about love because people think you did something
Speaker 1: you don't want to go No roomy, that's Johnny Body singing.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, Johnny started working with kids at
Speaker 1: a secure treatment facility for juvenile delinquents in Boston, Gazzy
Speaker 1: In for rate murder robber teenagers fifteen sixteen years old.
Speaker 1: And one of the good things about that situation is
Speaker 1: whenever I started talking, they would listen because I started
Speaker 1: talking about Mount Meiggs, start talking about what I was
Speaker 1: locked up in, the things that I did, and they say,
Speaker 1: and you are counselor. I said, yeah, I said you
Speaker 1: could change. But Johnny wasn't exactly on the street and
Speaker 1: narrow yet. When he moved to Boston in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: he was part time musician, part time self described hustler,
Speaker 1: prone to petty theft, robbery. Here and there. He was
Speaker 1: teaching the kids he worked with to be better, but
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily following his own advice. And then I would
Speaker 1: go back and be with the young guys. So my
Speaker 1: conscience start bothering me. I mean, how could I be
Speaker 1: trying to change these gathered I'm still at here, This
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying to myself. And I did that
Speaker 1: for about fifteen years, working with these gays, you know.
Speaker 1: So eventually I just just he ended up changing. And
Speaker 1: that's the best thing that ever happened to me in
Speaker 1: my life, you know. For the other Johnny, Johnny Mack Young,
Speaker 1: he's serving life without parole as we speak, for years.
Speaker 1: He had a plan, so I had made a commitment
Speaker 1: to myself there, but I got to live without parole.
Speaker 1: When I get tired during the time, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: make you, thought me. He'd commit suicide by cop by
Speaker 1: doing something that would force the prison guards to kill him.
Speaker 1: That led to a standoff with guards while at Holman,
Speaker 1: one of the most infamously brutal prisons in the country.
Speaker 1: But Johnny Mack survives a standoff, and he started corresponding
Speaker 1: with a prison advocacy volunteer via mail. He was shocked
Speaker 1: that someone would want to help him. I realized, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be that person I used to speak
Speaker 1: and the first baby I had to resolve why was
Speaker 1: the person that I would And it was all because
Speaker 1: of the treatment and the same that I was taught
Speaker 1: in my murde. So he started taking college courses offered
Speaker 1: in prison, first psychology, then writing. He's a poet and
Speaker 1: an essayist. He has a bachelor's degree in theology. He
Speaker 1: and some other incarcerated men produced a radio show. He
Speaker 1: also works as a jailhouse lawyer, helping other inmates file appeals.
Speaker 1: But for Johnny mac, the biggest change happened when the
Speaker 1: Alabama Department of Corrections started offering meditation courses. I've just
Speaker 1: staying in like about twenty three, and we learned how
Speaker 1: to you know, concentrate demand and get obsure sensation. Well
Speaker 1: that's it's change left five and it just learned it.
Speaker 1: Then got compassion. See like I almost a crying a
Speaker 1: little while when I was talking to you. I'm not
Speaker 1: affected by what happened back then, but just expression and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, killing somebody around it's enough to bring cheese
Speaker 1: tom eyes right. Johnny Mack has been in prison for
Speaker 1: thirty six years. He's seventy three now. He's currently building
Speaker 1: a case in hopes of being furloughed under Alabama law.
Speaker 1: He says he meets two of the requirements. He's a
Speaker 1: geriatric inmate, and he's permanently incapacitated. He had back pain
Speaker 1: so debilitating that sometimes it's hard for him to move
Speaker 1: at all. But because he's in prison, Johnny Max still
Speaker 1: has not received treatment. He's in his seventies now, though,
Speaker 1: and prison does at number on a person's life expectancy.
Speaker 1: Seventy three in prison is very different than seventy three outside.
Speaker 1: His health and survival is a race against the clock.
Speaker 1: Remember how he started this series, Lonnie Holly was out
Speaker 1: late at night exploring the streets of Birmingham, finding interesting
Speaker 1: things among the trash. He'd been separated from his parents
Speaker 1: and his dozens of siblings as a baby, and by
Speaker 1: the time he got to Mount Meg's he'd been given
Speaker 1: a different name entirely. But unlike so many other kids
Speaker 1: who got taken from their family, Lonnie actually found his
Speaker 1: by sheer coincidence. During a conversation he was having one
Speaker 1: day with another student at Mount Max, I was telling
Speaker 1: him about how I had been trying to get to
Speaker 1: the airport out to the Hollies and he asked me,
Speaker 1: what about the Hollies. He said he knowed some hollies
Speaker 1: is up the heel from what will. Word got back
Speaker 1: to Lonnie's grandmother that the baby they've been looking for
Speaker 1: all of this time, the one taken by aber Less
Speaker 1: Dancer more than a dozen years before, was locked up
Speaker 1: just a couple of hours away. My grandmother. When she
Speaker 1: found out that I was there, she came to visit
Speaker 1: me on that Sunday. So once she presented the birth
Speaker 1: certificate and everything that I was Lonnie Bradley Holly, they
Speaker 1: released me into her custody and I came home with her.
Speaker 1: It was nineteen sixty four when Lonnie was finally released
Speaker 1: from Mount Meg's. He was fourteen years old. Lonnie was
Speaker 1: glad to be reunited with his family, but the trauma
Speaker 1: and abuse he experienced at Mount Meg's stayed with him
Speaker 1: as he reacclimated to life outside, trying to fit back
Speaker 1: into the social system, it was almost impossible. His grandmother
Speaker 1: tried to enroll him back in school, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: with that in America side. At age fifteen, Lonnie followed
Speaker 1: one of his brothers to Florida and did whatever work
Speaker 1: he could pick up. He later became a cook at
Speaker 1: Disney World when it opened near Orlando in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: He's had a few scrapes at the law. He spent
Speaker 1: a couple of nights in jail, but nothing else. Since
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies, Lonnie's life has been dedicated to
Speaker 1: his art. He's an extremely successful visual artist and even
Speaker 1: has a cult following as a musician. But despite his
Speaker 1: eventful life traveling the world as an artist at a musician,
Speaker 1: those formative years at Mount Meg's are embedded in his
Speaker 1: head and in his body. Here's a clip from a
Speaker 1: sound check in the UK when Lonnie busted out something
Speaker 1: he learned as a kid that he called the Mount
Speaker 1: Meg's Stomp, the rhythm track for this podcast theme song.
Speaker 1: Lonnie is the only one who has been able to
Speaker 1: get back inside Mount Meg's. He went in twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: with a camera crew. During the visit, he clutched onto
Speaker 1: the arm of a close family friend, terrified, I get
Speaker 1: the heebie jeebs now you know, Okay, get your camera ready,
Speaker 1: cutsy dang gonna. This is this is the way they
Speaker 1: brought us in. Unlike us, Lonnie was allowed to tour
Speaker 1: the facility. He saw the old building that Eby Holloway
Speaker 1: used to live in, the white dormitory where the girls lived.
Speaker 1: The next year, he went back again, and this time
Speaker 1: just stood outside the gate reflecting on his time there,
Speaker 1: especially on the rock pile. It was just so horrible
Speaker 1: that I couldn't get it out of my memory. It
Speaker 1: was almost like you having to go through the shale shop,
Speaker 1: like you're being in the military, and it's just constantly
Speaker 1: going through your brain, and this is something that you
Speaker 1: just can't forget about. Lonnie's art is one way of
Speaker 1: working through the trauma he endured there. I talked to
Speaker 1: him about his sculpture Blood on the Rock Pile and
Speaker 1: some of his other pieces that refer directly to Mount Meg's.
Speaker 1: In one piece, he padlocked together eight spoons. It's called
Speaker 1: chain Gang Mount Meg's. Another called Whitewash, features seven broken mops.
Speaker 1: The mop heads are dirty, like how the kids in
Speaker 1: White would have looked after spending days or months on
Speaker 1: the rock pile. That's Meanwhile, I like doing abstract called
Speaker 1: the abstract can allow me and put my hand back
Speaker 1: in situation and then I can redo it. Here is
Speaker 1: something here I don't know what I can peel is
Speaker 1: away with the camera rolling, Lonnie peeled away a small
Speaker 1: piece of paint from the fence surrounding the grounds. So
Speaker 1: get that little piece or idea is enough to remind
Speaker 1: me that I I have been here today. So Lonnie,
Speaker 1: always fascinated by found objects that others would discard, took
Speaker 1: that small piece of Mount Megs with him, a fragment
Speaker 1: of a part of his life that he couldn't erase.
Speaker 1: We could have told you the simple story, the easy one,
Speaker 1: that the nineteen sixty nine lawsuit changed everything, that after
Speaker 1: Judge Frank Johnson ruled against the State of Alabama, Mount
Speaker 1: Meg's magically transformed into a caring home for children, a
Speaker 1: true place of rehabilitation. This is a story Mount Megs
Speaker 1: likes to tell too. In their January newsletter, the department
Speaker 1: said they welcome some new ideas on how best to
Speaker 1: rehabilitate youth. They mentioned that they prioritize communication and collaboration, writing,
Speaker 1: we share ideas freely and courageously. We embrace the potential
Speaker 1: of ideas and approaches. But the truth, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, is more complicated. Since the lawsuit, Mount
Speaker 1: meg seems to have gotten better, but it never got good.
Speaker 1: Some parts did improve, at least at first. It was
Speaker 1: less crowded that it had been. Kids had shoes to wear,
Speaker 1: but plenty of things stayed the same. In the past
Speaker 1: fifty years, countless children have run away, just as they
Speaker 1: used to, sometimes in packs of three or seven or
Speaker 1: even eleven. The state would once again use dogs to
Speaker 1: sniff them out, and if and when they were caught,
Speaker 1: they'd be arrested and sent to adult jail. And over
Speaker 1: the past fifty years, the overcrowding and poor infrastructure have
Speaker 1: made the news again every so often, as state authorities
Speaker 1: once again claim they're helpless to address the problems. And
Speaker 1: Mount Meg's tradition of poor record keeping didn't end in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one either. For example, in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: a board member noticed that the school had somehow lost
Speaker 1: ownership of seven hundred acres of land since the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and no one knew how. The school blamed
Speaker 1: the lack of paper trail on a nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: fire that destroyed the institution's administrative records, but the board
Speaker 1: member noted that the missing land had happened after the fire.
Speaker 1: He suspected that the land had been traded for political favors.
Speaker 1: And there have still been credible allegations of abuse perpetrated
Speaker 1: by staff and other students. Some of those allegations are
Speaker 1: in letters from parents or whispered among practitioners. Others can
Speaker 1: be found in lawsuits or newspaper articles. In twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: for example, a student filed suit against a school officer
Speaker 1: alleging he shoved him into the wall and slammed his
Speaker 1: into a table. The court noted the injuries bleeding bruises,
Speaker 1: cracked teeth, a swollen head. The feedback that I get
Speaker 1: from my clients while at Mount Megs is I think
Speaker 1: exactly what one would expect it to be. The worst
Speaker 1: case scenario would be death, and Mount Meg's would be
Speaker 1: immediately under that. That's Jennifer Schnipper, a lawyer who's practiced
Speaker 1: family law in Birmingham, Alabama for almost fifteen years. Relatively
Speaker 1: early in Jennifer's career, she had a young client facing
Speaker 1: time at Mount Meg's. The judge was very clear in saying,
Speaker 1: have you ever been to Mount Megs? And I said no,
Speaker 1: and he said you should go. So Jennifer arranged to
Speaker 1: visit the facility and immediately she understood what the judge meant.
Speaker 1: It's stark, it's cold, depressing, it's intimidating, and these I
Speaker 1: knew were kids anywhere from twelve to nineteen twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one years old that could be in there for three months,
Speaker 1: six months, three years. It was shocking that visit to
Speaker 1: Mount Meg's has shaped Jennifer's decisions as someone who represents
Speaker 1: children in court, by fight to keep my clients out
Speaker 1: of Mount Meg's because from my perspective, there is very
Speaker 1: little value in a commitment to Mount Meg's. I don't
Speaker 1: find that it particularly benefits my clients, and I often
Speaker 1: feel like it becomes a bigger detriment to my clients.
Speaker 1: Over the past couple of decades, the consensus around juvenile
Speaker 1: justice in America has shifted. In two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court ruled that's sentencing juveniles to death was unconstitutional,
Speaker 1: and twelve the Court also outlawed mandatory life without parole
Speaker 1: sentences for children. We know more about children now, more
Speaker 1: about their brain development, their decision making, the impulses that
Speaker 1: lead them to act out, and in some ways that
Speaker 1: knowledge is changing how the juvenile justice system works. Even
Speaker 1: in places like Alabama, the juvenile justice system tends to
Speaker 1: have changed perspectives significantly. We look at the child as
Speaker 1: a whole. In other words, they're more likely to try
Speaker 1: other ways of addressing the issues that children face, meaning
Speaker 1: that sending kids to places like Mount Meg's has steadily decreased,
Speaker 1: and it continues to decrease. I think commitments account for
Speaker 1: a very low number of outcomes for these delinquency cases.
Speaker 1: There are so many resources in place that can help
Speaker 1: us keep that from happen. There's one more thing about
Speaker 1: Mount Meg's that hasn't changed, and that's the suffering in silence.
Speaker 1: There's not much more interest in what's happening there now
Speaker 1: than there was fifty years ago. Some other institutions have
Speaker 1: seemed backlash related to their mistreatment of children, but there's
Speaker 1: been no reckoning at Mount Megs. We mentioned at the
Speaker 1: beginning of this podcast that Mount Meg's wasn't the only
Speaker 1: school that abused children. At the Dojer School in Florida,
Speaker 1: once known as the Florida State Reform School, children were
Speaker 1: abused for decades. In twenty twelve, a team of forensic
Speaker 1: anthropologists did field work on the property and uncovered dozens
Speaker 1: of unmarked graves. At least one hundred children were thought
Speaker 1: to have died there. There's a major difference between what
Speaker 1: the Doser School was like in the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties and Mount Megs. Both black and white students attended
Speaker 1: the Doser School, which was internally segregated, but aside from that,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of similarities between the two institutions,
Speaker 1: and the stories told by the survivors of the Doser
Speaker 1: School echo the stories of those who survived Mount Meg's
Speaker 1: and in Canada, over a hundred and fifty thousand Indigenous
Speaker 1: children were forcibly separated from their families and sent to
Speaker 1: what were called residential schools, many of which were run
Speaker 1: by the Catholic Church. Thousands of children at over a
Speaker 1: hundred schools suffered physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. In two
Speaker 1: twenty one, experts uncovered over six hundred bodies of children
Speaker 1: who died at just one school. These aren't the only
Speaker 1: other institutions where abusing children was systemic, normal, encouraged. But
Speaker 1: I've thought a lot about these two, specifically not because
Speaker 1: of what happened at the schools, but what happened after
Speaker 1: For survivors of both of these institutions. There's been a
Speaker 1: call for justice, a demand for accountability for the pain
Speaker 1: those children endured, and in both Florida and Canada, that
Speaker 1: call was at least sort of answered. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: the Florida legislature officially apologized to the survivors of the
Speaker 1: Dojer School. Cannot say with enough heart felt remorse that
Speaker 1: it's taken this long for a legislature, with all the
Speaker 1: evidence that is before us, to come forth and apologize
Speaker 1: for what has to be one of the blackest moments
Speaker 1: on our state's history. And in the summer of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, the Pope traveled to Canada to appologized publicly
Speaker 1: for the abuse that Indigenous children suffered. Bailoue de Santacion
Speaker 1: either very conciliation. So I wondered, did that feel like
Speaker 1: justice for those survivors to hear the abuse acknowledge, to
Speaker 1: hear some remorse for some. The answer is yes. Here's
Speaker 1: Peter Ernick, a survivor of the Kamloops Indian Residential School,
Speaker 1: speaking to CBC Television. The Pope's upology to me will
Speaker 1: allow its survivors to begin a new chapter but for
Speaker 1: others it's not enough, and for some it's not anything.
Speaker 1: We talked to some other survivors of the Dojer school
Speaker 1: about what the state's apology in twenty seventeen meant to them.
Speaker 1: Here's Charlie Fudge, it's time that they make something more
Speaker 1: right than just an apology. And Captain Bryant Middleton it
Speaker 1: was an empty gesture without meeting, with no follow up.
Speaker 1: And Richard Huntley, let me be honest with you, and
Speaker 1: I think that's whole wash. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, that's full of shit. After all,
Speaker 1: these apologies don't come with anything. Apologies demand no sacrifice
Speaker 1: from the state, no reparations, no settlements, no monetary damages
Speaker 1: for the personal damage done to them. The governor basically
Speaker 1: said they didn't have money to compensate us. Compensate us
Speaker 1: in the sense of ensuring that those that had been
Speaker 1: abused we were treated by doctors if need be. Most
Speaker 1: of us old guys have a very low income, and
Speaker 1: the majority of boys it was taken there and beaten
Speaker 1: actually ended up in prison. There's been bills for reparations.
Speaker 1: Money wouldn't fix what they went through. Nothing would, but
Speaker 1: at least it would be something as boys. These men
Speaker 1: were abused, tortured, their futures crippled by what they endured.
Speaker 1: What good are words now? And yet words are more
Speaker 1: than most have gotten. How many stories like this one
Speaker 1: have gone uncovered? How many children have gone missing or
Speaker 1: died without their families knowing what happened to them? How
Speaker 1: much abuse has been unleashed on kids like the ones
Speaker 1: at these schools without anyone saying anything. Here's one of
Speaker 1: the Doger survivors, Captain Bryant Middleton. Again, I can't help
Speaker 1: but wonder if any of this would surface anywhere else
Speaker 1: had it not been so prominently covered by the media
Speaker 1: here in Florida. How many other places are like dojer
Speaker 1: the Florida School for Boys that have not been found
Speaker 1: out or have not been reported. There's no telling. Alabama
Speaker 1: has never expressed any regret for what the state did
Speaker 1: to those children. In fact, the terror of Mount Meg's
Speaker 1: has gotten little attention at all before now, except for
Speaker 1: Denny's book and Jesse James Andrews appeal in California court.
Speaker 1: I have some theories of why that might be. At
Speaker 1: the Dojor school and the residential schools in Canada, survivors
Speaker 1: connected and organized. We decided we would have some sort
Speaker 1: of reunion. We were startled by the amount of turnout
Speaker 1: that we had. Literally hundreds of men showed up. It
Speaker 1: just was overwhelming. You can probably imagine how much the
Speaker 1: connection matters. How the fight for acknowledgment is much easier
Speaker 1: when hundreds of people speak out versus just one, regardless
Speaker 1: of the outcome. Being part of a group is some
Speaker 1: sort of relief catharsis, But survivors of Mount Megs haven't
Speaker 1: been organized like that quite yet, and so many of
Speaker 1: them suffer alone. They don't have anyone to validate their memories,
Speaker 1: their trauma, what they went through as children. There are
Speaker 1: other differences between Mount Meg's and some of these other facilities.
Speaker 1: For example, at the Dojer School, many of the survivors
Speaker 1: were white, which probably increased the likelihood of accountability. Plus,
Speaker 1: the other institutions have been shut down. The Dojer School
Speaker 1: shuttered in two eleven, and the Canadian residential schools have
Speaker 1: been closed since the early nineteen nineties. At Mount Megs,
Speaker 1: though the institution lives on, we don't know what became
Speaker 1: aim of the makeshift graveyard that Johnny Bodley and Lonnie
Speaker 1: Holly remember. But since this podcast began airing, we've gotten
Speaker 1: emails from people formerly affiliated with Mount Meg's, including one
Speaker 1: from someone who worked there within the last few years.
Speaker 1: He says, Lonnie and Johnny's memories are correct, that the
Speaker 1: small graveyard still existed when he worked there. Whoa with
Speaker 1: me Law. Other places have brought in forensic anthropologists to
Speaker 1: on earth these institutions secrets, But as long as Mount
Speaker 1: Meg's is open, that level of reckoning is impossible. How
Speaker 1: can Alabama fully apologize or account for the harm of
Speaker 1: an institution that still exists. Eby Holloway died in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six. Judge Thetford died in nineteen seventy seven. Most
Speaker 1: of the adult perpetrators are dead now, and lots of
Speaker 1: the children who were there in the nineteen sixties are
Speaker 1: dead too, But some remain, like Lonnie, Mary, Jenny and Johnny.
Speaker 1: Don't leave me alone, Lord, don't leave me alone? Why
Speaker 1: I'm all miss Jesus, john Ah, won't Jesus do all
Speaker 1: with me? So this is the end of our story,
Speaker 1: But ours is only part of the story of mounta Megs.
Speaker 1: The entire story of this place, now almost one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen years old, is limitless. There's no way to
Speaker 1: account for all the harm caused by Mountain Megs to survivors,
Speaker 1: and all the harm caused by survivors because of that trauma.
Speaker 1: I find myself wishing I had a clearer ending to
Speaker 1: give you, that I could say the survivors are completely
Speaker 1: at peace now that I could tell you there'd been
Speaker 1: some sort of reckoning with those who perpetrated these injustices. Denny,
Speaker 1: now in his eighties, is still trying to find a
Speaker 1: way to get reparations for the survivors of Mount Meg's,
Speaker 1: but that's not a promise that he or we can make.
Speaker 1: The true story, as always, is a little more unsatisfying
Speaker 1: than the stories we want to tell. Earlier, I asked
Speaker 1: what justice for these survivors would look like. But maybe
Speaker 1: the truth is that justice here is impossible. There's no
Speaker 1: way of making whole what was broken on that stretch
Speaker 1: of land outside of Montgomery. The harm cannot be undone.
Speaker 1: We asked, if you could talk to the people who
Speaker 1: abused you, what would you say? And Mary thought about
Speaker 1: Fanny Matthews and all of these years later, she found
Speaker 1: herself wondering what Fanny had gone through, what kind of
Speaker 1: pain she might have experienced herself to do what she
Speaker 1: did to Mary and so many others, What happened to
Speaker 1: her to make her so treacherous. You know, I'm softy too,
Speaker 1: as bad as it was, and I haven't so I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna lie to usday. I've forgiven her, Okay, if
Speaker 1: she told me what happened to her, I probably have
Speaker 1: a soft spot for her too. If I knew something
Speaker 1: that happened, listen, I don't know, I don't know, I'd
Speaker 1: probably end up loving her too. So maybe there's something else,
Speaker 1: a bit of comfort maybe, or even hope. And the
Speaker 1: fact that despite it all, many survivors still have the
Speaker 1: capacity for forgiveness. Despite it all, so many of them
Speaker 1: are still trying to make the world a little better,
Speaker 1: And fifty years later, they're still here, still suffering, still remembering,
Speaker 1: but still surviving all the same. Unreformed. The Story of
Speaker 1: the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children is a production
Speaker 1: of School of Humans and iHeartMedia. This episode was written
Speaker 1: by me Josie Deffie, Rice and Taylor von Laslie. Our
Speaker 1: script supervisors Florence Burrow Adams and our producer is Gabby Watts,
Speaker 1: who had additional writing and production support from Sherry Scott.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, Brandon Barr, Matt
Speaker 1: Arnette and Me. Sound design and mixes by Jesse Niswanger.
Speaker 1: Music is by Ben Soli. Additional recordings are courtesy of
Speaker 1: the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture. The songs featured in
Speaker 1: this episode are Scalaway by Spiritual Voices of Whitehall, Alabama,
Speaker 1: Walk with Me by Helen McLoud, and I'm a Suspect
Speaker 1: by Lonnie Holly courtesy of Jack Jaguar. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Michael Harriet, Floyd Hall,
Speaker 1: Kevin Nutt, Van Newkirk, and all of the survivors of
Speaker 1: Mount Meg's willing to share their stories. If you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode, please leave us a rating and review wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. If you are someone you know
Speaker 1: attended Mount Megs and would like to be in contact,
Speaker 1: please email Mountmegs Podcast at gmail dot com. That's Mt
Speaker 1: m e Igs Podcast at gmail dot com. School of
Speaker 1: Humans