MARIANNA, Fla. — A memorial to remember the boys who suffered severe abuse at Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna is now up.
This comes eleven years after state leaders shut down the reform school following allegations of severe abuse.
“I went there when I was twelve,” said Gene Luker.
Gene Luker was just a child when he was sent away to Dozier School for Boys, but what happened to him while there stayed with the 78-year-old to this day.
“I had one [instructor] hit me so hard in the face with his hand. POW! I never forget that, you know,” Luker said.
Luker was sent to the reform school twice and would ultimately spend three years there in the late 50s.
“You didn’t know when they were going to come in and snatch you out of class and take you down and beat you,” said Luker.
He vividly remembers being beaten bloody inside the small concrete building known as the white house.
“Hit you with that strap and the first time that strap hits you, it goes through every nerve in your body. I mean every nerve and it sounds like a shotgun,” Luker described.
Luker said boys endured unimaginable mental, physical, and sexual abuse while wards of the state.
“About 600-700 boys there when I was there, and you heard things, different things about boys getting raped,” he said.
He survived Florida’s 111-year secret, but so many did not.
Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle led a team of University of South Florida scientists that discovered 55 unmarked graves in the woods.
“What was surprising as we are finding more and more graves in the woods was why is there no list? Why is there no plot map? Why is there no record of really what happened to these children?” said Kimmerle. “You would think that there would’ve been more oversight and investigative work on the part of the state to explain what was happening as it was going on.”
The state shut down the institution for wayward boys in 2011 after allegations of abuse and suspicious deaths.
“There’s a disproportionate number of kids who were sent there who were Black. That number is also disproportionate in terms of those who died. 75% were Black,” said Kimmerle.
Scientists spent years researching who was buried there and reuniting the boys with their families through forensic and DNA testing.
“Once the remains were excavated, we start with a biological profile. Try to figure out basically how old each of the children were and we spent a lot of time doing archival and historic research to figure out who they might be,” said Kimmerle.
Marvin McMillian is part of the group of survivors known as the White House Boys.
“You kind of feel sorry for the ones that didn’t make it,” McMillian said.
The White House Boys went to Marianna Friday for the Dozier School for Boys memorial ceremony. State leaders erected the monument on school grounds to recognize the boys who lived and died there.
“The state needs to do more because a lot of boys lives were messed up back then,” McMillian said.
In 2017, the state issued a formal apology to survivors. For Luker, it’s a small portion of justice for the torture they experienced.
“They want to make a monument out of it. I’d like to take a sledgehammer to it. I think if I had that would relieve a lot of anger inside of me,” Luker said.
