White House Boys thankful for Dozier memorial but continue to search for justice
MARIANNA - A half dozen White House Boys returned to the campus of the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Jackson County Friday when officials dedicated a memorial to recognize the sexual and physical abuse they suffered while wards of the state more than 50 years ago.
The memorial is a white building where boys ages 6 to 18 were abused during the 100-plus years the school served as a “reform” school for children and is the product of a grassroots campaign begun 17 years ago once the school-age victims reached retirement age.
The facility was closed in 2011.
In 2017, the Florida Legislature apologized to the survivors for the lack of supervision at Dozier that enabled the beatings and rapes they endured and the deaths of their classmates.
Lawmakers also approved the construction of two monuments, one in Marianna, where Dozier was located, and another at the State Capitol.
More: An apologyLegislature to White House Boys: “We’re sorry . . . atrocities should never occur again”
Patrick Gillespie, a Department of Management Deputy Secretary, unveiled the Jackson County memorial and told the White House Boys and about 90 onlookers, it provides “a place to reflect and educate the public on the school’s history and for us to learn from it.”
The memorial includes a courtyard with sculptures in a circular display, next to the one-story concrete “white house.”
Orlando sculptor Frank Castelluccio posed for photographs in the courtyard with Dozier survivors and their family members before the ceremony began.
Life-size statues of adolescent boys stand in line facing a bed upon which is a leather strap used to administer the beatings. Behind and off to the side of the bed is an industrial fan — the abuse occurred in what was a converted milking stall — leading away from the blood-stained bed two boys help a third walk.
“You did a really good job, that’s pretty amazing,” 78-year-old Gene Luker told Castelluccio about the replica beating bed he created.
“I wasn’t trying to make it look pretty. I was trying to make it look realistic. We’re trying to tell a story here,” explained Castelluccio.
The Dozier story isn’t a pretty one.
More:Dozier School for Boys survivors want state to pay
Dozier School's undoing
Luker was held there from 1956 –1959. According to him and others the beatings occurred on Saturday mornings.
“They’d beat you for low grades. Not for low grades for arithmetic or spelling. It might be for spitting on the sidewalk, looking at an employee wrong, not answering quick enough when asked a question,” said 85-year-old Claude Robinson.
Robinson was held at Dozier in 1953. He talked while giving a tour of the White House beating rooms.
Stories about abuse at Dozier had circulated for years and were mostly dismissed until former students formed the White House Boys Survivors Organization in 2005. They demanded the State of Florida acknowledge what it permitted to happen to them.
The 300-member group elected Jerry Cooper, the quarterback of their 1961 high school football team, president and he and others started calling lawmakers and the media to tell their story.
Cooper was lashed 136 times with the strap, and threatened with five years in prison if he did not play for the football team. He passed away in 2022.
“The mental damage they suffered. I’ve talked to their widows and families. I know about the trickle-down effects,” said Cooper’s widow Babs.
Nightmares and unmarked graves
She held Jerry’s White House Boys ballcap at the lectern while she spoke.
Babs told of a nightmare Jerry had the night he died last May, “he was going back to that bed and strap,” and yelling the name of the man who had beaten him 61 years ago.
More:Jerry Cooper, who fought for White House Boys abused at Dozier school, dies at 76
“We have to move forward. We can't change history. But we can certainly work and help love each other and never let it happen again,” said Babs.
In 2009, the White House Boys convinced then-Gov. Charlie Crist to look into their allegations. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation found two dozen unmarked graves but no evidence to substantiate the White House Boys stories.
But the findings did lead the state to close the facility and piqued the interests of University of South Florida anthropologists who brought ground penetrating sonar and excavation techniques to the investigation.
USF researchers found 55 unmarked graves — 29 more than FDLE had. Many were located in the woods under trees, and in the brush along an old road less than 200 yards from a property known as Boot Hill Cemetery.
The randomness of the burials, with remains at different depths and angles, was taken as confirmation of the survivors’ stories.
USF anthropologists presented a report to the Florida Cabinet in 2016 that showed most of the deaths were caused by illness, but others were the result of beatings, gunfire, and drowning and there was a correlation between attempted escapes and mortality of the children.
It is believed that the bodies of more than 100 boys are in unmarked graves. There is no paperwork documenting what happened to many of the deceased.
Senator asks for compensation for 'my guys'
“We have names. One-hundred-eight-five guys that were here, but never shown leaving. One-hundred-eighty-five children coming in, but not leaving. We don’t know what happened to them,” said Luker.
Sen. Tracie Davis, D-Jacksonville, delivered the dedication’s keynote address. She referred to the White House Boys as “my guys,’ and has sponsored legislation to provide financial compensation to the victims every year since 2017.
“We’ll likely never know the full extent of the shame written in history with the blood of countless children,” said Davis, stopping five times to collect herself in a span of two minutes.
“This is very hard to stand here in front of you guys to talk about this unveiling,” said Davis.
Davis pledged to continue to sponsor legislation to provide compensation, identify recovered remains, and to find the remains of others buried on what was the 1,400-acre Dozier campus.
Luker and the other White House Boys thanked the state and Jackson County for the ceremony.
“I was 12 when I came here. They could do anything they wanted to us. How do you get justice? Everybody’s dead,” said Luker.
James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on him Twitter: @CallTallahassee.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Memorial unveiled on former grounds of Dozier School for Boys
