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Debate Turns Emotional Over Dozier School Memorial
August 4, 2016
A state task force on Wednesday began an emotional debate about how to commemorate the victims of abuse and brutality at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and what to do with the unidentified remains of youths who died at the shuttered reform school.
“The mission and goals of this task force are different and sensitive from most other task forces,” Secretary of State Ken Detzner told the nine-member panel, which held its first meeting in Marianna, near the site of the 1,400-acre Dozier property in Jackson County.
Detzner said the task force has been directed by the Legislature to develop recommendations by Oct. 1 on the creation of a memorial to honor the victims of the reform school, which operated from 1900 to 2011, as well as designating a permanent burial site for victims whose bodies were unidentified or unclaimed.
An investigation led by University of South Florida researchers found 51 sets of remains in an unmarked graveyard known as Boot Hill Burial Ground at the Dozier facility, including victims of a 1914 dormitory fire. USF anthropologists identified 21 of the sets of remains through DNA and other methods.
The law that created the task force also provided $7,500 for each family for funeral and reburial costs if they claimed the remains of victims.
But in its initial meeting, the task force found itself at odds over the issue of whether the memorial and the permanent burial site should be at the former Dozier reform school or elsewhere in the state.
Eric Hill, a Jackson County commissioner who serves on the task force, said the permanent burial site and memorial would receive greater exposure if it was in a more populated area of the state, rather than the rural Panhandle county.
“I think the location would be best fit with a larger population,” Hill said.
He was supported by Jerry Cooper, who was sent to Dozier as a runaway teen and who leads a group of “White House Boys,” an organization named for a building where youths said they were beaten and abused.
“I see no reason, whatsoever, to reinter these people, these children, back on this property,” Cooper said. “As far as I am concerned, it would be only adding insult to injury.”
Dale Landry, representing the Florida NAACP, said his civil rights organization was unanimous in believing that the memorial should be at the former reform school.
“Our biggest fear is that once you let it go, it will be forgotten,” Landry said, adding the goal should be to “repurpose that land and make it sacred.”
Stephen Britt, whose uncle died at Dozier in 1946, strongly objected to the idea of not having a memorial and permanent burial in Jackson County.
“They want it to be totally eliminated. They don’t want any reference of it being here. They are ashamed, but they shouldn’t be,” Britt said. “They didn’t commit those crimes. Their ancestors did, but they didn’t.”
Britt, at one point, called the proceeding “a farce,” but later apologized for his outburst, while adding “you must understand this is extremely personal to me.”
“I think everyone understands how emotional this is,” said Timothy Parsons, head of the state Division of Historical Resources and chairman of the task force. “And I think we all feel really strongly about our responsibilities.”
David Jackson, a Florida A&M University history professor who was appointed as a non-voting adviser to the task force, said it would be “very unusual” to not have a memorial at the site of the former reform school.
“It gives us an opportunity to continue to teach people for generations to come about what’s right, what’s wrong, what should not have occurred so we won’t repeat those things going forward,” he said.
The task force agreed to wait until its Aug. 19 meeting to begin voting on proposals for creating a memorial and designating a permanent burial site for the unidentified or unclaimed Dozier victims.
The task force’s Oct. 1 report will be forwarded to the Department of State, lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet.
by Lloyd Dunkelberger and Tom Urban, The News Service of Florida
Pictured top: A trench dug in the search for human remains at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna. Pictured below: Mapping the graves. Pictured inset: The remains of George Owen Smith have been positively identified. Courtesy photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Comments
10 Responses to “Debate Turns Emotional Over Dozier School Memorial”
I can imagine no justification for moving unclaimed remains from the Dozier site or placing a memorial in any other location. It doesn’t matter that the school is in a rural setting – that was probably by design to hide the torture and abuse of little boys, and it should be remembered right there where it happened.
Those boys’ families never knew they were being sent into a living hell to serve literally as tortured and abused slaves, many of whom died under suspicious circumstances. This cannot be sanitized. It is an ugly blight on a segment of Florida’s history and it should be remembered for its true horror to help ensure that this type of thing never happens again.
I am friends with one of the Black survivors who feels strongly that the remains and memorial should be on the Dozier Reform School grounds, and I strongly support his feelings. The Florida NAACP urges that the remains and memorial be on Dozier grounds. White survivors may be okay with an alternate location because they didn’t suffer as much as the Black children. Archaeological findings revealed that three times as many black students died and were buried at Dozier than white students ( http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-finally-know-what-happened-brutal-reform-school-180957911/ ). As a Black American citizen, I am against anything being done to minimizing the horror that was the Dozier Reform School.
To paraphrase an old saying, if we forget a horrid past, we may be doomed to repeat it. There is still enough hate and greed in this country to make Dozier-type atrocities happen again in some secluded area. The Dozier horror was horrifically shameful. An effort to hide anything about what was done to children at Dozier would be very telling in a way I would hope the perpetrators’ descendants would not want.
Isn’t it ironic how the powerful government, in all of its raging power in the dark, can terrorize the weak, homeless, disadvantaged, isolated, underprivileged, disowned, and purposely neglected young boys? I read somewhere along the way, “Beat your slaves into submission, and kill a few of them every once in a while; they will fear you, and you will have a well-organized plantation. It will keep your wealth coming in even when you are not there.”
In all of the State of Florida’s dark, perverted glory, you did the things those helpless brothers say you did to them, things the people of the State of Florida can hardly stomach. The parents and relatives in Florida awarded their defenseless little boys to you, the state, to be placed in the comfort of caring homes, but what did you do? Put them in cages and made slaves out of them. You are guilty of that, State of Florida.
Now comes daylight, the truth, and you are caught with your hand in the cookie jar of guilt. You still manage to shift the blame to someone else, your dedicated warriors, but they’re dead. The State of Florida doesn’t have the courage to try to straighten up what your predecessors did. The State of Florida is gutless.
I agree with Bob Baxter’s idea and beyond. I suggest two things, since there were two sides to the story and one side is hardly ever heard–the dark side, to be exact. I suggest that since there were two sides, the black side and the white side, reserve a part of both sides. I am from the segregated side where all that’s left is the church and a partial cottage where we were housed. Now! Take a cottage from the white side and the White House, reserve an acre or more of land and bring them together in one location on that property with a plaque engraved with the names of all the dead and missing boys over the school’s 110-year span that never left F.S.B, F.I.S. Dozier Reform School.
This symbolizes that what happened there and who it happened to is never to be forgotten. The State of Florida wants to erase all memory of what Jackson County and the State of Florida did. No! Don’t send their remains to an unknown place! Let the remains stay right there until their families come get them and take them home. Until then, while their souls are still trapped where they’ve been for so long, that part of Florida will always be in a state of unrest. I am sure there are people living in that town that have no idea what their grand and great-grandparents have done.
Does anyone know of a database that would give the names of the Dozier Camp staff. They were paid with taxpayer funds, so their names should be available for public review.
The surviving staff members should be vetted and anyone identified as a perpetrator of abuse, should feel the full force of justice.
I was tortured by the leaders of Dozier. The men that tortured me mostly had children of their own. How could they be cruel to me and others and kind to their own children? I will never get it. I survived torture and beatings like you never want to even see. The screams of others still ring in my ears. I hope they do erect something that is befitting of the boys beat – molested – tortured and murdered at Marianna. It is sad for the people of Jackson county but how many generations of our families will suffer the results of the tortured we endured at both schools? Many, I can assure you of that. Florida needs to release an official written apology to all White House Boys and to do that right away. As for the grounds there in Marianna – I agree with Jerry Cooper and the Official White House Boys.
This isn’t over folks and truth be told it may never be over.
I agree with Baxter, build the memorial so as not to forget and let’s not give it some supernatural excuse of ’satan lives there’ for this was humans treating children with extreme cruelty and we should never, ever, give them an excuse to defer guilt. Give the site a greater purpose and have the memorial. These memorials will tug on your emotions, upset you even, as well they should.
I hate Bob Baxter’s idea. Does he know the whole story about The a Dozier School For Boys. My heart breaks tremendously every time that I am reminded of the horrible torture these poor children endured. I guess the victims deserve a memorial, I just don’t know if it would be a very good influence on society . Memorials should accentuate the positive. Don’t we already have enough depressing us ? Please tear down any remaining building on the premises. Satan lives there.
To return the bodies to Jackson county would be criminal . a lot of them died and were buried under criminal actions . As for a memorial I think the building known as the Ice cream factory later called the Whithouse should be repaired and a designated as a Memorial or Monument so that the barbaric beatings that took place there should forever be a reminder of a very ugly chapter in Marrianna and Jackson county history , Never to be repeated again . As Gen Patton said when them came to the death camps at Auschwitz ” take a lot of photos because in time some will deny this ever happened” So it will be in Mariana, even today there are those that deny it . May God guide this task force and give them the wisdom to do it right!!
This has been a cover up from the start and the state of florida knew about it and did nothing to stop it. These boys were killed then buried in unmarked graves and forgotten about until Dr. Erin Kimmerle and her team exhumed their remains. Now pay up “Florida” because you did this.
My first thought, looking at the photo of George Owen Smith was that someone loved him. Look at his cut, parted and combed hair. Seems like those doing the torturing must have had the same thing done to them as children. Children are taught to love or hate. They need to declare that land a memorial park. We need to remember this happened, not hide the fact.
There are two kinds of people in America; those who break the law and are not prosecuted and those who are brought to justice.
Those boys were systematically tortured and terrorized, the fact that this was done under sanction is a poor excuse for not erecting a memorial in memory of these young victims.