We carry their bones The search for justice at the Dozier School for Boys

Erin H. Kimmerle

Book - 2022

Recounts the story of the Dozier School, a Florida reform school shut down in 2011 due to reports of cruelty, abuse, and mysterious deaths, and the efforts of the author, a leading forensic anthropologist, to locate and exhume the graves of the boys buried there in order to reunite them with their families.

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Subjects
Genres
Case studies
Published
New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Erin H. Kimmerle (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
x, 241 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-230) and index.
ISBN
9780063030244
  • Author's Note
  • Chapter 1. Opening the Earth
  • Chapter 2. New Light
  • Chapter 3. Graveyard
  • Chapter 4. The Battle of Boot Hill
  • Chapter 5. "Satan has his Seat"
  • Chapter 6. A Meeting with the Chief
  • Chapter 7. "Hell on Earth"
  • Chapter 8. "We Can't Forget ... What Happened in Jackson County"
  • Chapter 9. "Oftentimes, History Doesn't Include the Good Parts"
  • Chapter 10. "Thank You All for Your Good Work"
  • Chapter 11. Reconstruction
  • Chapter 12. Identification
  • Chapter 13. "It's Not Even Past"
  • Chapter 14. "Where is He?"
  • Chapter 15. "The Unimaginable Happened at Dozier"
  • Chapter 16. "You Have the Truth on Your Side"
  • Chapter 17. What Remains
  • Acknowledgments
  • Appendix
  • Abbreviations
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Gripping investigation into a corrupt, dangerous Florida reform school, the institution featured in Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys. Beginning in 1900, the Dozier School for Boys housed thousands of young men sentenced for presumed crimes, mostly minor infractions, who were at the mercy of their jailers and a Jim Crow system of injustice. Many died there, buried in forgotten graves. Forensic anthropologist Kimmerle arrived with years of experience under her belt, including examining the killing fields of the Balkans, and set to work trying to identify the remains of young men whose bones lay intermingled in a sort of potter's field. Inevitably, her work expanded not just to embrace the bones she and a legion of volunteers uncovered, but also to comprehend "a historical justice question": finding the identities of the dead and the causes of their deaths. Along the way, Kimmerle unveils a corrupt, racially structured system that swept up young men, mostly Black, hired out to work for local plantations and factories in "a vicious cycle designed to keep the wheel of cheap labor turning." Many of the deaths resulted from savage beatings by guards and fellow inmates goaded by their captors in a kind of fight-club scenario that enabled killing by proxy. The bones told stories: "a lot of boys between twelve and fourteen. One who was twenty-one and died while paroled to a farm, presumably to work for his bus fare home." The Florida system has been dismantled--sort of, anyway, as "but one institution within a system structured to define people by color and class" that endures--but Kimmerle speaks eloquently to official crimes that have yet to be fully accounted for, giving a closely observed account of forensic investigation along the way. A horrific story of true crime, unjust punishment, and the quest for justice for the victims of a cruel state. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.