Unreformed: the Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children
In 1968, police arrested five Black girls dressed in oversized military fatigues in Montgomery. The girls were runaways, escaping from a state-run reform school called the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama. The girls were determined to tell someone about the abuse they’d suffered there: physical and sexual violence, unlivable facilities, and grueling labor in the fields surrounding the school. It was, as several former students called it, a slave camp.
Peabody-nominated UNREFORMED is the story of how this reform school derailed the lives of thousands of Black children in Alabama for decades and what happened after those five girls found someone willing to blow the whistle. Host Josie Duffy Rice investigates the history of the school at the tail end of the Civil Rights movement in Alabama and speaks to former students who are still haunted by their experience but had the will to survive.
Our Editor's Take
The Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children podcast shares a terrible but true story. In each episode, host Josie Duffy Rice details what happened at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children. In the late 1960s, five Black girls fled from a state-run reform school to share about severe abuse. The abuses the school's students endured are horrific. The children who survived to tell the tale have begun sharing their experiences.
Podcast host Rice is a journalist who works in criminal justice. She first learned of the Industrial School when Lonnie Holley called her. She thought that the musician and artist wanted to discuss featuring his work. To her surprise, he told her he had gone to a child prison. How did this prison exist in the US? How did Alabama law allow it to happen? Further, what can listeners learn from this story now? Rice seeks to answer these questions through her investigation. The Unreformed podcast is the result.
The school, Rice found, began with the best intentions. The daughter of an enslaved woman thought it would help Black children. Rather than going to prison for adults, they would have the chance to correct their behavior. Once the founder sold it to the state of Alabama, things changed. It no longer focused on rehabilitation. Punishment and all kinds of abuses became the norm. To this day, Alabama has not offered any apology or payment to the children it abused.
This eight-part series may enrage and break the hearts of listeners. It may inspire them to learn how the juvenile system treats non-white children today. The survivors of the school tell listeners what they endured. Rice shares her year-long investigation in each episode of the podcast. In the final episode, she explores what justice might resemble today. Unreformed is an important listen.
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