Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children

In eight gripping episodes, journalist Josie Duffy Rice tells the story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, the “reform” school now called Mt. Meigs.

It was founded by an African American educator during Reconstruction to keep Black children out of the white-run adult jails and to offer them an education. That all changed when the state took it over.

Drawing heavily on the voices of former students, Rice shares the horrors of this institution that imprisoned hundreds of African American children, including baseball legend Satchel Paige and contemporary artist Lonnie Holley.

Rice highlights not only the repression, but also the bravery of a group of African American teenage girls (led by Mary Stephens) who escaped in the late 1960s and exposed the abuses at Mt. Meigs. In collaboration with a sympathetic white probation officer turned whistleblower (Denny Abbott), and some lawyers, they finally got their day in court.

Listeners learn how white supremacist local officials and the white-owned media used every trick in the book to undermine and discredit attempts to reform Mt. Meigs. Rice describes the long-term impact of Mt. Meigs and the juvenile justice system nationally — including interviews with former students serving life or death sentences.

In a Teen Vogue interview, Rice noted that one reason for producing this podcast is that,

Erasing the Black experience and erasing the different levels of oppression and torture that Black people have had to endure throughout history is the way to ensure that oppression continues in different forms.