February 8, 2023 • 28 mins
Since the 1920s, notices started appearing in the local newspapers near Mt. Meigs. They said things like "Six armed negroes escaped Mount Meigs Industrial School” or “Police seeking escape artist in burglary."
In this episode, we hear about the tradition of running away at Mt. Meigs. Lonnie tells us about his experience running away and the harrowing consequences that led him to spend months on the rock pile.
If you or someone you know attended Mt. Meigs and would like to connect with us, please email mtmeigspodcast@gmail.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. Please note that this podcast episode discusses
historical events that include physical abuse against children. Please take
care as you listen. For most, if not all, of
Mount Megs existence, running away was a tradition born of necessity.
(00:28):
We mentioned in the first episode that in nineteen twenty
two there had been a fire that destroyed many of
the early records about Mount Megs. So it's hard to
know just how many kids ran away in the school's infancy,
but as far back as the nineteen twenties and thirties,
children ran away regularly and sometimes successfully. In nineteen twenty nine,
(00:51):
sixteen of the three hundred and fifty students successfully escaped
Mount Megs. By the next decade, that number had basically doubled.
In the nineteen fifties and sixties, the Montgomery Advertiser, the
local paper, regularly published stories alerting the community to runaways
from Mount Megs. In fact, these notices made up a
(01:13):
significant chunk of the local papers mentions of Mount Megs
at all. Press about Mount Megs was mostly letting people
know when the school had years of corn for sale.
Her notice is about a lost mule or runaways. Six
armed negroes escaped Mount Meg's Industrial School, read the headline
of one such article. Another told of a fourteen year
(01:35):
old Mount Meg's runaway believed to be behind the theft
of several items cigars, cookies, and other knickknacks from a
candy store. Despite the very real and very corporal consequences
if caught, kids ran away from the Alabama Industrial School
for Negro Children all the time in the years after
the state took over. In fact, many of them ran
(01:56):
away over and over and over again, kept escaping even
if they didn't get too far. In one story, the
Alabama Journal mentioned two boys, Willie, who had allegedly tried
to escape Mount Meg's five times and Leonard, who had
tried to run away ten times. Every former resident we
talked to for this podcast has a story about running
(02:17):
away from Mount Meg's. And the one thing all of
these stories have in common is this the belief that
life as a teenage fugitive was better than life as
a quote unquote student at Mount Meg's, even knowing what
would happen if they were caught. I'm Josie Duffie Rice,
(02:41):
and this is unreformed. The Story of the Alabama Industrial
School for Negro Children, Episode four the runaways. By all accounts,
(03:10):
the punishment for running away could be even more brutal
than the day to day violence. Bloodhounds would chase after you,
and if they caught you, they'd bite and wouldn't let go.
Chargeboys were once exemplary students, trusted with more responsibility by
the superintendent, but by the nineteen sixties the job had
been corrupted. They'd become henchmen for the administrators, granted permission
(03:34):
to terrorize other students, and they'd also join the hunt
for runaways. Johnny Body was both prey and witness to
such hunts. This is the worst for automatic. They would
make a charing boy beat you. They'd almost damn near
killed you, and they bring you back this like that
for every matter to sing and they put your own display,
(03:57):
which is what happened to Jenny Knox. Jenny was serving
her second sentence at Mount Meg's. After she got out
the first time, she was put in the care of
her sister, but they had a contentious relationship, and so
the sister called up the justic attorney and asked them
to take Jenny back. She called him and told him
that she couldn't do anything with me but to come
(04:19):
take me back down to Mount Maids, and I was
looking for that black car man. I recognized that black car,
and I recognized them two faces in up front, and
they came to get me out for her porch. When
the juvenile probation officers arrived, Jenny was able to evade
them in a cat and mouse chase, and she outsmarted
(04:42):
them by diving into some tall grass behind the nearby house.
She knew they wouldn't look there, and that's where I stayed.
I didn't know of no snakes and none that I
wasn't scared. Jenny stayed in that tall grass for hours.
It started getting dart and then I came out and
(05:03):
it's okay, free alas free Las, thank god online. But
Jenny's freedom was short lived. Eventually they caught me the
second time. When Jenny was in the back of the
probation officer's black car, she knew what type of hell
was awaiting her at Mount Meg's. This time, she wasn't
the naive thirteen year old confused right she was being
(05:26):
sent away given that, as she saw it, she had
done nothing wrong. Jenny was now fifteen years old, and
she was returning to the devil she knew, so they
considered as being a two timers. So I was a
two timers and nothing had gotten no better. Jenny had
no intention of staying at Mount Meg's. That tried to
run away from out there, and in I trying to
(05:48):
run away, Me and another lady got into some serious
trouble when they end up putting us in a straight
jacket and we had to stand up and dining room.
Why everybody else was sitting out eating and we couldn't
eat anything because we were in white. For the way,
if they were caught running away or labeled troublemakers, kids
(06:09):
had to wear white clothing. It was a mark of
shame so that these kids could be easily identified among
the masses of kids and army fatigues. They put you
in white, and a lot of times just by you
being in white, you would lock away from the other boys.
They will give you a white a big white jumpsuit.
(06:32):
They never watched it, so the white soup became almost
black before you got out of white. White means no privileges.
Mary's responsibilities as head dormitory girl led to more scrutiny
and punishment from Fanny, and she had already sustained a
terrible injury from one of Fanny's beatings. She had hit
(06:55):
me in the hair with a bottle in My head
was swollen. Mary had to go to the hospital and
Fanny she would make me stay on the stairs. People
couldn't see me ahead to stand the stairs in the
closet during the day so I wouldn't be seeing. I ran.
I ran and ran, and ran, and ran and ran.
(07:18):
When Lonnie ran away, he'd been at Mount Meg's about
a year. It was nineteen sixty two and he was
twelve years old. He was out in the fields with
a group of other boys pulling up cornstocks, and he
needed to go to the bathroom. Now, you were lucky
if mister Glover let you use the bathroom. Sometimes, even
(07:40):
if he did, he'd make a charge boy supervise, and
that could lead to physical and sexual abuse. If you
were given the permission to go, you were supposed to
make it quick. Run to the woods, do your business,
and come right back. But Lonnie looked out that day
mister Glover allowed him to take a bathroom break in
the woods alone, and while he was gone, the group
(08:02):
moved on to another spot, leaving him behind. I had
no intention of running away, but they're longer. I stooped down.
They kept moving up the field, so I was like
a rabbit. I just dumped there and stayed there. And
(08:24):
they kept moving up the field so rapidly. They went
over this bluff. You can hardly see their head. And
that's when I started backing up. And I backed up,
and I kept backing up, raising my body up, graightening up.
I didn't see nobody pulling my clothes up, fasten them up,
(08:47):
army tight, not turn around, And I started running behind money.
It was a barbed wire fence that separated a cornfield
from the pecan orchards. He jumped a fence and dashed
(09:12):
across the orchards, which turned out to be kind of dangerous.
Train through the bride and a stick of bushes and
all the other things that within the perimedy. Around the
Alabama Industrial School, they had man made pawn. If you
(09:34):
wasn't careful, you'll fall off into one of them and
you're drowned and nobody never know you were on them. Still,
Lonnie ran ram ram ram ram ram ram ram ran
nobody something all body midt now just rain. Lonnie ran
(10:10):
with no idea where he was or where he was.
Headache back of a muffling around ten a levemo of tide,
and I ran and I didn't know where. I woke
as a dog, and I fell into this hole, and
that's where I went to sleep. I slepped down in there.
(10:32):
Didn't know of no snakes or nothing was in it.
Lonnie's luck held. No snakes bothered him while he slept,
and he woke up early the next morning at sunrise,
took the sound of roosters and birds chirping. He took
a look around. I clambed up out of the grave
right a roof at at three and then that's when
(10:55):
I looked around and I saw a real old tombstone.
He realized the sleeping spot was right next to a cemetery.
He kept running and soon found the highway. He ran
alongside it to avoid detection. His oversized hand me down
military fatigues would have been a red flag to any
passer by that he was a mountains escapee, so he
(11:16):
ran in the ditches like all those times in Birmingham. Eventually,
Lonnie came to what he called a tractor place. He's
referring to a farm all show room where they sold tractors.
As he was scoping out the place, he looked into
a window in spite a can of sardines. So I
took my elbow because I had on long sleeve, and
I took my elbow and knocked out one of the
(11:38):
window and went into the farmall tractor play and opened
the frigerated. It was some cheene cracker, A cold drank,
and I sat down and I ate my belletfool, because
I was tired. I feel it's leap. Lonnie was exhausted.
(12:05):
He didn't know it at the time, but he traveled
more than twenty five miles on foot in less than
twenty four hours, almost all the way to Tuskegee. But
he didn't get to sleep for long. The next thing
I know, the man that owned the track of play.
He was a white man, be white man, grabman mccaullo.
(12:28):
The man had Lonnie in a bind yelling at him.
He got you tightly griped, and then he took his
fist and knocked me out. I mean literally knocked me unconscious.
Lonnie was knocked out on the floor of the tractor place.
When he came to, his bleary eyes made out the
(12:48):
image of someone who wasn't there before, someone he didn't
want to see. Next thing I know, somebody flapping me
in my place, Holland Dolan. Why did you run away?
Why did you run away? It was Superintendent Eb Holloway.
He took it fish and showing the white man he
(13:09):
could knock me out. And he took and knocked me
out again. Two grown men punching a child unconscious. The
next time Lonnie woke, he was back at Mount Meg's,
on the floor of the cottage for solitary confinement. He
was held there for a day, which he spent nursing
(13:30):
his head. Part of the misery of being in that
cottage was the apprehension just waiting for the brutal punishment
that was to come in the morning. And next thing
I knew were a chigboys coming to the sale and
(13:50):
taking me out of sale, ultimate by both arms, taking
me down to this big cedar tree. Now forget below
the cedar tree was a bench also made of cedar.
Your arm was cooking, wrapped around the tree and tied
around the tree like you hooking the tree, and your
(14:12):
back leg was tied to the bench. And this was
going to be a public spectacle. So all of the
girls from the girl's home and brought down the boys
from the boy's home, all of them. They're brought down
(14:33):
every boy, everybody mist the Holloway shout out the dollar,
why you want to run away? And then you look around.
He said, who you wanted to whoop you? You want
me to ready to make you drunk? I'm at the
(14:56):
Glover to make you sick. So I had ran away
from mister Glover, so I chose at the Glover to
whoop me. Mister Holloway gave orders for the beating to start.
The amount of licks that he told him marked the
glove of a hit me, and he's like, shoot him
a hunting in fifth, I mean hit you a hunting
(15:19):
in fifty times. He was hitting Lonnie with a fan
belt on his bare legs. So he hit you right
in the back of your head and knocked you out cold.
So that's the third time I don't be known got
knocked out. The beating was so violent that mister Glover
(15:40):
he didn't know whether he had killed me or not.
When Lonnie came to next, blood was dripping down his legs,
running down into his socks. They dressed him in white.
A deep x was shaved into his hair, another mark
of a runaway. They took away his shoes and then
(16:03):
he was thrown onto the rock. The rock pile was
the most infamous torture site on the Mountain's campus. It's
(16:25):
a big old circle of nothing but a pile of boone.
And they were whitewashed. All of them were whitewater. The
trees all around them there was rock that had been
jug when you clear the feed, and they brought brought
to the central location powder and whitewashed beautifully white. It's often,
(16:52):
I mean, it's like in this big, this big yard,
in all of this dirty and all these big, these
big square rocks painted white. I'm saying you had to
beat undid something real, real bad for you to go
on the rock pile. You on the rock pile, You
are an example. Once condemned to the rock pile, you
(17:13):
weren't allowed to leave. The only places you could go
were to the kitchen to sleep, into the chapel on
Sundays if you could muster the strength. Otherwise you were
stuck there. You couldn't even leave to use the bathroom.
You on the rock pile day and night rang sleep
(17:34):
pale of snow. If you went out of the circuit,
it would beat it. You know. The rock pod was brutal.
On the rock pile, the boys in white were ostracized
from everyone else, and there was even more violence between
them because there was nothing else to do except sit
there or move some rocks around. It was just them
and the elements and the rocks. You know. I was
(17:55):
sitting in the rock pod once on a rock came
in and hit me in the face, you know, almost
knocked my out, And thought about two fifteen years after
that when out here and when I get out of
Mount Me, I used to walk around like this, yere,
Johnny's holding his hands up in front of his eyes,
like expecting a rock to come from anywhere. Lonnie figured
(18:17):
he might very well end up dying on the rock pile,
and he thought no one would notice or care. I
remember every time that I would touch the back of
my thighs and my leg or one day pull the
different clothes off of me, they just ripped it off
of me and so that exposed it. There's soul that
(18:40):
was on me, and they just stopped bleeding all over again.
But they beating me to the print that I couldn't
even walk. I couldn't do nothing but crowl Even now,
he remembers his blood dripping onto the white rocks. The
days turned two weeks, and the weeks turned two months.
(19:03):
According to Lonnie, eighteen months later, he was still on
the rock pile. I asked him at the Holloway every
day for a year and a half, when you're gonna
let me off the rock pile. Lonnie created a sculpture
called Blood on the Rock Pile in two thousand and three,
(19:25):
and when I met him earlier this year, I asked
him about it. So sure, up took clay and red
paint and mix it up like my blood in the clay,
white washed the rocks, and I took wires. I wanted
(19:46):
to buy that situation up so tight. I wanted to
rid myself that experience, but I can't. I gave whoopings
in my sleep about it. The rock pile still haunts
Lonnie to this day. I've often caught myself in that
(20:09):
state of being, in my dreams, of asking when are
you going to let me off the rock pile? As
Lonnie tells it, Holloway finally led him off the rock
pile months later and I asked them and the next
thing I know, it was taking me down In one day.
(20:31):
It was my time to come off the rock pile.
Lonnie didn't try to run away again. Often it wasn't
only the kids who wanted to get away from Mount Meg's.
Their parents wanted them home too. We have a document
from school administrators that was given to parents and what
(20:51):
we think was the late nineteen sixties or so, and
it says the purpose of this institution is to train
and reclaim delinquent girls and boys of Alabama by giving
them spiritual, academic, and vocational experience, and by teaching them
to live wholesome lives in their communities. And then in
all caps, the document says it is not a prison,
(21:16):
but many parents knew otherwise. We found letters and the
state archives written to the governor from parents begging for
their children's release. None of them had any idea when
their children were coming home. And though they didn't know
much about what was happening to their kids at Mount Meg's,
they knew enough to be scared. Here's one from nineteen
(21:39):
sixty eight to Governor Lorline Wallace, George Wallace's wife. She
became governor of Alabama in nineteen sixty seven, right after
her husband's first term. The mother writing to her is
talking about her son, Gregory. He has been on Mount
Meg's for eighteen months. She says, Gregory is my baby son.
(22:02):
I would like for him to come home. I believe
he has learned a lesson. He was born with the
deformity right side. He is not a bad boy. It
was mostly the neighborhood that I was living in at
the time. If there is any way possible you can
help me get my son home, I will thank you
from the bottom of my heart. You are a mother,
(22:25):
and I know you know how a mother feels about
her child. I want my son home, please please. Once
a month, parents could come visit Mount Meg's, but according
to the letters, the visits were closely supervised, making it difficult,
if not impossible, for children to tell their parents what
was really going on. One letter says when the parents
(22:49):
go to visit them, they can't sit down and talk
with them without someone sitting in their presence. They're afraid
to talk. In the nineteen forties, one mother, Corinne Hill,
filed a habeas petition in court saying her child was
being unlawfully detained, and the court agreed, ruling that her
son was entitled to be seen by a judge, but
(23:12):
that didn't change the process. At Mount Meg's, kids were
still detained indefinitely, often without so much as a hearing.
And the reason that these parents couldn't get any attention,
any response, any recourse, was obvious. It was because they
were black. Here's an excerpt from one letter that we found.
(23:35):
I honestly feel that my son's present situation is the
result of prejudice on the judge's part and the fact
that he was a victim of circumstances. I've exhausted all
means of trying to help him there, but it seems
that there's a minority here that must accept whatever decisions
are made, whether they represent justice or not. When I
(23:58):
was researching Mount Megs, this was one of the hardest
parts for me as the black parent of young kids.
This idea that your children can be taken by the
state and there's nothing you can do but beg it's
hard to grapple with. In one nineteen sixty eight letter,
a desperate mother tells the governor that she knows the
(24:20):
kids are being mistreated. They beat them with a stick.
She says they don't have nice clothing to wear, and
she talks about how they're starving. They have corn bread
and syrup and peanut butter for breakfast. Mister eb Holloway
is stealing their food. She tells the governor that the
(24:41):
men who watch over the boys are beating all sides
of their heads. She asks, will you please do something
about it. Here's another letter from a parent from nineteen
fifty nine, written to the governor. The children are having
a hard time. It says, these children work in the fields.
(25:03):
He tells the governor he doesn't believe he knows how
bad it is, or else he would do something about it.
The letter continues, I don't believe the men and women
in prison have such a hard time. Please please look
into this matter. Mostly these parents were either ignored or
given the run around. The governor's office would often refer
(25:24):
them back to Mount Meg's. We don't have many records
of Mount Megs's response to stuff like this, but we
have one record where eb Holloway himself wrote back. We
don't have the original letter from the parent, only Holloway's
letter in response. In it, he wrote, we wish to
assure you that William is not receiving any inhumane treatment
(25:46):
nor injustice, but he is fortunate to be receiving a
type of training that he did not receive at home.
Holloway concluded by saying, you may be assured that as
soon as the staff feels that William has received the
maximum benefit, we shall be happy to recommend him for release.
But despite Holloway's insistence that Mount Megs was doing a
(26:08):
better job at raising the kids than their parents, the
constant stream of runaways indicated otherwise. I was tired and
scared and just didn't want to take it anymore. It's
November nineteen sixty eight and Mary Stevens has been at
Mount Megs for about a year. She was constantly wearing white.
(26:29):
Fannie Matthews had already given her that brutal beating that
sent her to the hospital, and she had already attempted
to run away once. But then a new girl arrived
at Mount Meg's, and there was a girl that came
to stay at Mount Megs that really wasn't afraid of them,
because she was there for either attempting to kill somebody
(26:53):
or killing someone possible murder or not. Mary and the
new girl became friends, Mary admired her bravery. She remembers
the new girl wasn't afraid she'd take a beating from
Fanny and look her dead in the eyes while it
was happening. It was the new girl who had the idea.
One day, Mary and four other girls were working together
(27:15):
in the fields around Mount Meg's and the new girls
said they should run, and this escape would change everything. Unreformed.
(27:38):
The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children
is a production of School of Humans and iHeartMedia. This
episode was written by Me, Josie Deffie, Rice, and Taylor
von Laslie. Our scoop supervisors Florence Burrow Adams, and our
producer is Gabby Watts, who had additional writing and production
support from Sherry Scott. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley,
Brandon Barr met Urnette, and Me. Sound design and mixes
(28:00):
by Jesse Niswanger. Music is by Ben Soli. Additional recordings
our courtesy of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture. Special
things to the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Michael Harriet,
Floyd Hall, Kevin Nutt, Van Newkirk, and all of the
survivors of Mount Meg's willing to share their stories. If
you are someone you know attended Mount Megs and would
like to be in contact, please email Mountmegs podcast at
(28:21):
gmail dot com. That's Mt M e i g S
Podcast at gmail dot com. School of Humans
School of Humans. Please note that this podcast episode discusses
historical events that include physical abuse against children. Please take
care as you listen. For most, if not all, of
Mount Megs existence, running away was a tradition born of necessity.
(00:28):
We mentioned in the first episode that in nineteen twenty
two there had been a fire that destroyed many of
the early records about Mount Megs. So it's hard to
know just how many kids ran away in the school's infancy,
but as far back as the nineteen twenties and thirties,
children ran away regularly and sometimes successfully. In nineteen twenty nine,
(00:51):
sixteen of the three hundred and fifty students successfully escaped
Mount Megs. By the next decade, that number had basically doubled.
In the nineteen fifties and sixties, the Montgomery Advertiser, the
local paper, regularly published stories alerting the community to runaways
from Mount Megs. In fact, these notices made up a
(01:13):
significant chunk of the local papers mentions of Mount Megs
at all. Press about Mount Megs was mostly letting people
know when the school had years of corn for sale.
Her notice is about a lost mule or runaways. Six
armed negroes escaped Mount Meg's Industrial School, read the headline
of one such article. Another told of a fourteen year
(01:35):
old Mount Meg's runaway believed to be behind the theft
of several items cigars, cookies, and other knickknacks from a
candy store. Despite the very real and very corporal consequences
if caught, kids ran away from the Alabama Industrial School
for Negro Children all the time in the years after
the state took over. In fact, many of them ran
(01:56):
away over and over and over again, kept escaping even
if they didn't get too far. In one story, the
Alabama Journal mentioned two boys, Willie, who had allegedly tried
to escape Mount Meg's five times and Leonard, who had
tried to run away ten times. Every former resident we
talked to for this podcast has a story about running
(02:17):
away from Mount Meg's. And the one thing all of
these stories have in common is this the belief that
life as a teenage fugitive was better than life as
a quote unquote student at Mount Meg's, even knowing what
would happen if they were caught. I'm Josie Duffie Rice,
(02:41):
and this is unreformed. The Story of the Alabama Industrial
School for Negro Children, Episode four the runaways. By all accounts,
(03:10):
the punishment for running away could be even more brutal
than the day to day violence. Bloodhounds would chase after you,
and if they caught you, they'd bite and wouldn't let go.
Chargeboys were once exemplary students, trusted with more responsibility by
the superintendent, but by the nineteen sixties the job had
been corrupted. They'd become henchmen for the administrators, granted permission
(03:34):
to terrorize other students, and they'd also join the hunt
for runaways. Johnny Body was both prey and witness to
such hunts. This is the worst for automatic. They would
make a charing boy beat you. They'd almost damn near
killed you, and they bring you back this like that
for every matter to sing and they put your own display,
(03:57):
which is what happened to Jenny Knox. Jenny was serving
her second sentence at Mount Meg's. After she got out
the first time, she was put in the care of
her sister, but they had a contentious relationship, and so
the sister called up the justic attorney and asked them
to take Jenny back. She called him and told him
that she couldn't do anything with me but to come
(04:19):
take me back down to Mount Maids, and I was
looking for that black car man. I recognized that black car,
and I recognized them two faces in up front, and
they came to get me out for her porch. When
the juvenile probation officers arrived, Jenny was able to evade
them in a cat and mouse chase, and she outsmarted
(04:42):
them by diving into some tall grass behind the nearby house.
She knew they wouldn't look there, and that's where I stayed.
I didn't know of no snakes and none that I
wasn't scared. Jenny stayed in that tall grass for hours.
It started getting dart and then I came out and
(05:03):
it's okay, free alas free Las, thank god online. But
Jenny's freedom was short lived. Eventually they caught me the
second time. When Jenny was in the back of the
probation officer's black car, she knew what type of hell
was awaiting her at Mount Meg's. This time, she wasn't
the naive thirteen year old confused right she was being
(05:26):
sent away given that, as she saw it, she had
done nothing wrong. Jenny was now fifteen years old, and
she was returning to the devil she knew, so they
considered as being a two timers. So I was a
two timers and nothing had gotten no better. Jenny had
no intention of staying at Mount Meg's. That tried to
run away from out there, and in I trying to
(05:48):
run away, Me and another lady got into some serious
trouble when they end up putting us in a straight
jacket and we had to stand up and dining room.
Why everybody else was sitting out eating and we couldn't
eat anything because we were in white. For the way,
if they were caught running away or labeled troublemakers, kids
(06:09):
had to wear white clothing. It was a mark of
shame so that these kids could be easily identified among
the masses of kids and army fatigues. They put you
in white, and a lot of times just by you
being in white, you would lock away from the other boys.
They will give you a white a big white jumpsuit.
(06:32):
They never watched it, so the white soup became almost
black before you got out of white. White means no privileges.
Mary's responsibilities as head dormitory girl led to more scrutiny
and punishment from Fanny, and she had already sustained a
terrible injury from one of Fanny's beatings. She had hit
(06:55):
me in the hair with a bottle in My head
was swollen. Mary had to go to the hospital and
Fanny she would make me stay on the stairs. People
couldn't see me ahead to stand the stairs in the
closet during the day so I wouldn't be seeing. I ran.
I ran and ran, and ran, and ran and ran.
(07:18):
When Lonnie ran away, he'd been at Mount Meg's about
a year. It was nineteen sixty two and he was
twelve years old. He was out in the fields with
a group of other boys pulling up cornstocks, and he
needed to go to the bathroom. Now, you were lucky
if mister Glover let you use the bathroom. Sometimes, even
(07:40):
if he did, he'd make a charge boy supervise, and
that could lead to physical and sexual abuse. If you
were given the permission to go, you were supposed to
make it quick. Run to the woods, do your business,
and come right back. But Lonnie looked out that day
mister Glover allowed him to take a bathroom break in
the woods alone, and while he was gone, the group
(08:02):
moved on to another spot, leaving him behind. I had
no intention of running away, but they're longer. I stooped down.
They kept moving up the field, so I was like
a rabbit. I just dumped there and stayed there. And
(08:24):
they kept moving up the field so rapidly. They went
over this bluff. You can hardly see their head. And
that's when I started backing up. And I backed up,
and I kept backing up, raising my body up, graightening up.
I didn't see nobody pulling my clothes up, fasten them up,
(08:47):
army tight, not turn around, And I started running behind money.
It was a barbed wire fence that separated a cornfield
from the pecan orchards. He jumped a fence and dashed
(09:12):
across the orchards, which turned out to be kind of dangerous.
Train through the bride and a stick of bushes and
all the other things that within the perimedy. Around the
Alabama Industrial School, they had man made pawn. If you
(09:34):
wasn't careful, you'll fall off into one of them and
you're drowned and nobody never know you were on them. Still,
Lonnie ran ram ram ram ram ram ram ram ran
nobody something all body midt now just rain. Lonnie ran
(10:10):
with no idea where he was or where he was.
Headache back of a muffling around ten a levemo of tide,
and I ran and I didn't know where. I woke
as a dog, and I fell into this hole, and
that's where I went to sleep. I slepped down in there.
(10:32):
Didn't know of no snakes or nothing was in it.
Lonnie's luck held. No snakes bothered him while he slept,
and he woke up early the next morning at sunrise,
took the sound of roosters and birds chirping. He took
a look around. I clambed up out of the grave
right a roof at at three and then that's when
(10:55):
I looked around and I saw a real old tombstone.
He realized the sleeping spot was right next to a cemetery.
He kept running and soon found the highway. He ran
alongside it to avoid detection. His oversized hand me down
military fatigues would have been a red flag to any
passer by that he was a mountains escapee, so he
(11:16):
ran in the ditches like all those times in Birmingham. Eventually,
Lonnie came to what he called a tractor place. He's
referring to a farm all show room where they sold tractors.
As he was scoping out the place, he looked into
a window in spite a can of sardines. So I
took my elbow because I had on long sleeve, and
I took my elbow and knocked out one of the
(11:38):
window and went into the farmall tractor play and opened
the frigerated. It was some cheene cracker, A cold drank,
and I sat down and I ate my belletfool, because
I was tired. I feel it's leap. Lonnie was exhausted.
(12:05):
He didn't know it at the time, but he traveled
more than twenty five miles on foot in less than
twenty four hours, almost all the way to Tuskegee. But
he didn't get to sleep for long. The next thing
I know, the man that owned the track of play.
He was a white man, be white man, grabman mccaullo.
(12:28):
The man had Lonnie in a bind yelling at him.
He got you tightly griped, and then he took his
fist and knocked me out. I mean literally knocked me unconscious.
Lonnie was knocked out on the floor of the tractor place.
When he came to, his bleary eyes made out the
(12:48):
image of someone who wasn't there before, someone he didn't
want to see. Next thing I know, somebody flapping me
in my place, Holland Dolan. Why did you run away?
Why did you run away? It was Superintendent Eb Holloway.
He took it fish and showing the white man he
(13:09):
could knock me out. And he took and knocked me
out again. Two grown men punching a child unconscious. The
next time Lonnie woke, he was back at Mount Meg's,
on the floor of the cottage for solitary confinement. He
was held there for a day, which he spent nursing
(13:30):
his head. Part of the misery of being in that
cottage was the apprehension just waiting for the brutal punishment
that was to come in the morning. And next thing
I knew were a chigboys coming to the sale and
(13:50):
taking me out of sale, ultimate by both arms, taking
me down to this big cedar tree. Now forget below
the cedar tree was a bench also made of cedar.
Your arm was cooking, wrapped around the tree and tied
around the tree like you hooking the tree, and your
(14:12):
back leg was tied to the bench. And this was
going to be a public spectacle. So all of the
girls from the girl's home and brought down the boys
from the boy's home, all of them. They're brought down
(14:33):
every boy, everybody mist the Holloway shout out the dollar,
why you want to run away? And then you look around.
He said, who you wanted to whoop you? You want
me to ready to make you drunk? I'm at the
(14:56):
Glover to make you sick. So I had ran away
from mister Glover, so I chose at the Glover to
whoop me. Mister Holloway gave orders for the beating to start.
The amount of licks that he told him marked the
glove of a hit me, and he's like, shoot him
a hunting in fifth, I mean hit you a hunting
(15:19):
in fifty times. He was hitting Lonnie with a fan
belt on his bare legs. So he hit you right
in the back of your head and knocked you out cold.
So that's the third time I don't be known got
knocked out. The beating was so violent that mister Glover
(15:40):
he didn't know whether he had killed me or not.
When Lonnie came to next, blood was dripping down his legs,
running down into his socks. They dressed him in white.
A deep x was shaved into his hair, another mark
of a runaway. They took away his shoes and then
(16:03):
he was thrown onto the rock. The rock pile was
the most infamous torture site on the Mountain's campus. It's
(16:25):
a big old circle of nothing but a pile of boone.
And they were whitewashed. All of them were whitewater. The
trees all around them there was rock that had been
jug when you clear the feed, and they brought brought
to the central location powder and whitewashed beautifully white. It's often,
(16:52):
I mean, it's like in this big, this big yard,
in all of this dirty and all these big, these
big square rocks painted white. I'm saying you had to
beat undid something real, real bad for you to go
on the rock pile. You on the rock pile, You
are an example. Once condemned to the rock pile, you
(17:13):
weren't allowed to leave. The only places you could go
were to the kitchen to sleep, into the chapel on
Sundays if you could muster the strength. Otherwise you were
stuck there. You couldn't even leave to use the bathroom.
You on the rock pile day and night rang sleep
(17:34):
pale of snow. If you went out of the circuit,
it would beat it. You know. The rock pod was brutal.
On the rock pile, the boys in white were ostracized
from everyone else, and there was even more violence between
them because there was nothing else to do except sit
there or move some rocks around. It was just them
and the elements and the rocks. You know. I was
(17:55):
sitting in the rock pod once on a rock came
in and hit me in the face, you know, almost
knocked my out, And thought about two fifteen years after
that when out here and when I get out of
Mount Me, I used to walk around like this, yere,
Johnny's holding his hands up in front of his eyes,
like expecting a rock to come from anywhere. Lonnie figured
(18:17):
he might very well end up dying on the rock pile,
and he thought no one would notice or care. I
remember every time that I would touch the back of
my thighs and my leg or one day pull the
different clothes off of me, they just ripped it off
of me and so that exposed it. There's soul that
(18:40):
was on me, and they just stopped bleeding all over again.
But they beating me to the print that I couldn't
even walk. I couldn't do nothing but crowl Even now,
he remembers his blood dripping onto the white rocks. The
days turned two weeks, and the weeks turned two months.
(19:03):
According to Lonnie, eighteen months later, he was still on
the rock pile. I asked him at the Holloway every
day for a year and a half, when you're gonna
let me off the rock pile. Lonnie created a sculpture
called Blood on the Rock Pile in two thousand and three,
(19:25):
and when I met him earlier this year, I asked
him about it. So sure, up took clay and red
paint and mix it up like my blood in the clay,
white washed the rocks, and I took wires. I wanted
(19:46):
to buy that situation up so tight. I wanted to
rid myself that experience, but I can't. I gave whoopings
in my sleep about it. The rock pile still haunts
Lonnie to this day. I've often caught myself in that
(20:09):
state of being, in my dreams, of asking when are
you going to let me off the rock pile? As
Lonnie tells it, Holloway finally led him off the rock
pile months later and I asked them and the next
thing I know, it was taking me down In one day.
(20:31):
It was my time to come off the rock pile.
Lonnie didn't try to run away again. Often it wasn't
only the kids who wanted to get away from Mount Meg's.
Their parents wanted them home too. We have a document
from school administrators that was given to parents and what
(20:51):
we think was the late nineteen sixties or so, and
it says the purpose of this institution is to train
and reclaim delinquent girls and boys of Alabama by giving
them spiritual, academic, and vocational experience, and by teaching them
to live wholesome lives in their communities. And then in
all caps, the document says it is not a prison,
(21:16):
but many parents knew otherwise. We found letters and the
state archives written to the governor from parents begging for
their children's release. None of them had any idea when
their children were coming home. And though they didn't know
much about what was happening to their kids at Mount Meg's,
they knew enough to be scared. Here's one from nineteen
(21:39):
sixty eight to Governor Lorline Wallace, George Wallace's wife. She
became governor of Alabama in nineteen sixty seven, right after
her husband's first term. The mother writing to her is
talking about her son, Gregory. He has been on Mount
Meg's for eighteen months. She says, Gregory is my baby son.
(22:02):
I would like for him to come home. I believe
he has learned a lesson. He was born with the
deformity right side. He is not a bad boy. It
was mostly the neighborhood that I was living in at
the time. If there is any way possible you can
help me get my son home, I will thank you
from the bottom of my heart. You are a mother,
(22:25):
and I know you know how a mother feels about
her child. I want my son home, please please. Once
a month, parents could come visit Mount Meg's, but according
to the letters, the visits were closely supervised, making it difficult,
if not impossible, for children to tell their parents what
was really going on. One letter says when the parents
(22:49):
go to visit them, they can't sit down and talk
with them without someone sitting in their presence. They're afraid
to talk. In the nineteen forties, one mother, Corinne Hill,
filed a habeas petition in court saying her child was
being unlawfully detained, and the court agreed, ruling that her
son was entitled to be seen by a judge, but
(23:12):
that didn't change the process. At Mount Meg's, kids were
still detained indefinitely, often without so much as a hearing.
And the reason that these parents couldn't get any attention,
any response, any recourse, was obvious. It was because they
were black. Here's an excerpt from one letter that we found.
(23:35):
I honestly feel that my son's present situation is the
result of prejudice on the judge's part and the fact
that he was a victim of circumstances. I've exhausted all
means of trying to help him there, but it seems
that there's a minority here that must accept whatever decisions
are made, whether they represent justice or not. When I
(23:58):
was researching Mount Megs, this was one of the hardest
parts for me as the black parent of young kids.
This idea that your children can be taken by the
state and there's nothing you can do but beg it's
hard to grapple with. In one nineteen sixty eight letter,
a desperate mother tells the governor that she knows the
(24:20):
kids are being mistreated. They beat them with a stick.
She says they don't have nice clothing to wear, and
she talks about how they're starving. They have corn bread
and syrup and peanut butter for breakfast. Mister eb Holloway
is stealing their food. She tells the governor that the
(24:41):
men who watch over the boys are beating all sides
of their heads. She asks, will you please do something
about it. Here's another letter from a parent from nineteen
fifty nine, written to the governor. The children are having
a hard time. It says, these children work in the fields.
(25:03):
He tells the governor he doesn't believe he knows how
bad it is, or else he would do something about it.
The letter continues, I don't believe the men and women
in prison have such a hard time. Please please look
into this matter. Mostly these parents were either ignored or
given the run around. The governor's office would often refer
(25:24):
them back to Mount Meg's. We don't have many records
of Mount Megs's response to stuff like this, but we
have one record where eb Holloway himself wrote back. We
don't have the original letter from the parent, only Holloway's
letter in response. In it, he wrote, we wish to
assure you that William is not receiving any inhumane treatment
(25:46):
nor injustice, but he is fortunate to be receiving a
type of training that he did not receive at home.
Holloway concluded by saying, you may be assured that as
soon as the staff feels that William has received the
maximum benefit, we shall be happy to recommend him for release.
But despite Holloway's insistence that Mount Megs was doing a
(26:08):
better job at raising the kids than their parents, the
constant stream of runaways indicated otherwise. I was tired and
scared and just didn't want to take it anymore. It's
November nineteen sixty eight and Mary Stevens has been at
Mount Megs for about a year. She was constantly wearing white.
(26:29):
Fannie Matthews had already given her that brutal beating that
sent her to the hospital, and she had already attempted
to run away once. But then a new girl arrived
at Mount Meg's, and there was a girl that came
to stay at Mount Megs that really wasn't afraid of them,
because she was there for either attempting to kill somebody
(26:53):
or killing someone possible murder or not. Mary and the
new girl became friends, Mary admired her bravery. She remembers
the new girl wasn't afraid she'd take a beating from
Fanny and look her dead in the eyes while it
was happening. It was the new girl who had the idea.
One day, Mary and four other girls were working together
(27:15):
in the fields around Mount Meg's and the new girls
said they should run, and this escape would change everything. Unreformed.
(27:38):
The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children
is a production of School of Humans and iHeartMedia. This
episode was written by Me, Josie Deffie, Rice, and Taylor
von Laslie. Our scoop supervisors Florence Burrow Adams, and our
producer is Gabby Watts, who had additional writing and production
support from Sherry Scott. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley,
Brandon Barr met Urnette, and Me. Sound design and mixes
(28:00):
by Jesse Niswanger. Music is by Ben Soli. Additional recordings
our courtesy of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture. Special
things to the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Michael Harriet,
Floyd Hall, Kevin Nutt, Van Newkirk, and all of the
survivors of Mount Meg's willing to share their stories. If
you are someone you know attended Mount Megs and would
like to be in contact, please email Mountmegs podcast at
(28:21):
gmail dot com. That's Mt M e i g S
Podcast at gmail dot com. School of Humans
Host
Josie Duffy Rice
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