Scientists
have found 19 previously unknown grave shafts on the grounds of a notorious
Florida reform school, suggesting that many more boys died there amid brutal
conditions than had previously been known, the researchers said
Monday.
The Arthur G.
Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, which was also known as the Florida State
Reform School, closed in June 2011 after state investigators and the U.S.
Justice Department's Civil Rights Division confirmed widespread abuse over many
decades.
The state
attributed its decision to close the school to budgetary reasons. Yet long
before then, the institution had been the target of investigations and lawsuits
alleging not only physical and mental abuse but also forced labor, rape and even
murder of the young charges sent to its care since it opened in
1900.
The prominent
writer Roger Dean Kiser, author of "The White House Boys - An American Tragedy,"
about the horrors he experienced while incarcerated there in the 1950s as a
child, has called the school a "concentration camp for little boys." He wrote
that "a devil was hiding behind every tree, every building and even behind every
blade of manicured grass."
They're called
the White House Boys because much of the abuse occurred in an 11-room building
on the school grounds known as the White House, where former students say they
were beaten with leather straps. A group of the former students sued the state
in 2010, but the case was dismissed because the statute of limitations had
expired.
Previous
investigations and records had reported that 31 boys were buried on school
grounds, and that most of them died in a fire and an influenza outbreak at the
school in the early 1900s. But researchers at the University of South Florida,
in Tampa, say they now estimate there are at least 50 grave shafts in the area
of the school's cemetery and the surrounding woods. Some graves may have been
the final resting place for more than one boy, the researchers said in an
interim report released Monday.
Records
recovered and examined by the researchers indicate that at least 96 boys and two
adults died at the school from 1914 to 1973. Most of boys who were committed to
the school and died there were African-American.
But that may be
only the tip of the iceberg: The researchers didn't have access to student
records after 1960, when such documents became subject to privacy laws.
Moreover, researchers couldn't test the entire area because of overgrowth and
vegetative conditions, they said.
And more
chillingly, there may be other, secret graveyards somewhere on the grounds,
given the number of still-unaccounted-for cases and the practice of segregating
cemeteries during the first half of the last century, Erin Kimmerle, an
assistant professor of anthropology at the university, said on a conference call
with reporters. It's highly unlikely that white boys were buried with black boys
during those decades, but as yet, the researchers haven't found a previously
hidden whites-only cemetery.
"I didn't
realize going in how much of a story of civil rights it was," Kimmerle
said.
The research
team used ground-penetrating radar and other methods to map the school's
cemetery and chemically analyzed the soil to identify the number of
graves.
"We anticipated
finding about 25 to 30 grave shafts," said Christian Wells, an assistant
professor of anthropology who led the anthropological work at the site, "but in
fact we found a minimum of 50" - all of them on the north side of the campus,
called Boot Hill, where African-American boys were
segregated.
A full picture
of the sheer scale of the abuses remains difficult to paint, because there are
significant gaps and discrepancies in the records, "and the cause and manner of
death for the majority of cases are unknown," the report
said.
"Many questions
persist about who is buried at the school and the circumstances surrounding
their deaths," the report said. But Kimmerle said the team had determined that
at least 20 boys died within the first three months of having been remanded to
the school's custody - probably because they were unable to cope with the
crowding and the conditions - and that burial locations were unspecified for
nearly three times more African-American boys than for white boys. NBC
News
ARA/HJ
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