0:08

School of Humans. The

0:11

nineteen forty eight World Series signaled

0:14

a new era for Major League Baseball.

0:17

The Boston Braves faced off against

0:19

the Cleveland Indians and the first Championship

0:21

to be nationally televised, and

0:24

in Game five, Leroy Satchel

0:26

Page took the mound, the

0:28

first ever player from the Negro Leagues

0:30

to pitch in a World Series. Here's

0:33

the moment he walked onto the field, and

0:36

here's the announcement about the appearance of

0:38

sache past the

0:47

Hall of Famer remains one of baseball's

0:49

most celebrated pitchers. Page's

0:52

pitching remained bold, versatile,

0:54

and unpredictable as he was pitching for the

0:56

Indians in that historic game some seventy

0:58

four years ago. In

1:00

the nineteen forty eight game, his fast

1:02

pitching was on full display.

1:05

The pitch swung on and I

1:10

don't think the fast. Each

1:13

man who went up to bat against him dreaded it.

1:16

And he had stamina. He

1:18

was eighteen when he began playing baseball

1:21

professionally and didn't hang up his hat

1:23

until he was almost sixty. Page

1:26

started in the Negro National Leagues in the mid nineteen

1:28

twenties and eventually became the first

1:30

black pitcher to play in the American League. All

1:34

the best players of the time said Paige was

1:36

the greatest. Joe DiMaggio

1:38

called him the best I've ever faced and the

1:40

fastest. Plus the man

1:42

had more personality than the rest of the league combined.

1:46

Here he is in nineteen fifty eight talking

1:48

to a reporter in Miami. While

1:50

he was playing. It became a running joke that

1:52

Sachel would never disclose his age. The

1:54

truth I don't think of but a very few people in the United

1:56

States, nor my age, of where I come from me because

1:59

I've been playing him since I was a kid. I never had

2:01

a job. But still this isn't one hundred

2:03

years run everybody on feet. This he did

2:05

played ball with miss albums one hundred, some of them

2:07

eighty five and ninety. Page

2:11

died in nineteen eighty two. He's

2:13

buried in Kansas City, Missouri, home

2:15

of his beloved Negro League Monarchs. The

2:17

Page's roots were further south. He

2:20

grew up in a poor family, the sixth of twelve

2:22

children, in a segregated neighborhood

2:24

called Down the Bay in Mobile, Alabama.

2:27

Nat You at least stands a home in Kansas City.

2:30

He visits down a mobile as

2:33

that said one time that I just live wearing pitcher.

2:38

Both Satchel Page's birthplace and resting

2:40

place claim him mobile

2:43

in Kansas City have streets, schools,

2:45

and scholarships in his name, but

2:47

most people don't know that there was a third

2:50

place that changed Sachel Page's life.

2:53

In fact, if it wasn't for one woman,

2:55

Cornelia Bowen of Tuskegee, Alabama,

2:58

the great Sachel Page might never have

3:00

been because he was on a

3:02

trail to He's gonna either get end

3:04

up being lands dead. This

3:07

is Donald Spivey, an American historian

3:09

and distinguished professor at University of Miami.

3:12

He wrote the book If You Were Only White,

3:15

The Life of Leroy Satchel Page

3:17

was trouble youth in

3:19

appollance of black people. He was hardheaded.

3:22

He was just a difficult, difficult

3:24

child, and back then, and

3:26

particularly in the South, they would

3:29

tell you go and fetch me a switch. He

3:31

heard that so often that that could have

3:33

been his other nickname rather than Satchell.

3:35

He could have been go and fetch me a switch. That

3:38

hardheadedness got young Satchel into trouble

3:40

outside of the home too. By

3:43

twelve, he was known in his neighborhood for stealing,

3:46

and it's rumored that his nickname Satchel

3:48

came from an incident where he was caught stealing

3:50

a bag and he skipped school.

3:53

Even back then, though Satchell could

3:55

throw throw hard, he'd

3:58

hunt with just a pile of rocks in

4:01

mobile train tracks separated down

4:03

the bay from the nearby white neighborhood,

4:06

and sometimes young white boys and black

4:08

boys would meet along the tracks to

4:10

battle. They had

4:12

a ongoing rock bottles

4:15

with the Oakdale School, which was a white

4:18

school across the railroad

4:21

tracks, and white students threw rocks

4:23

up and they threw rocks back

4:26

at them, and this became the racial

4:28

rock wars. One bottle

4:31

got out of hand, page trying

4:33

to hold off this forward

4:36

coming mob of white started throwing

4:39

rocks with bad intentions, and you know,

4:41

with his ability to throw, he was hitting people

4:43

in the head. And he's lucky he didn't lock

4:46

somebody's eye out, and the white

4:48

Yonsters luckily didn't complain

4:50

to their parents about it. Community

4:53

could have been wiped out down

4:59

the bay, might have been spared, but Sachel's

5:01

prowess with rocks and his reputation

5:03

for sticky fingers soon caught the attention

5:06

of Mobile's police chief Frank

5:08

Crenshaw, a man whose peacekeeping

5:10

philosophy included the belief

5:12

that all black boys between seven and sixteen

5:16

should be sent to a detention facility

5:18

for any minor crime. He

5:20

said as much in a letter he wrote to the founder

5:23

of Tuskegee University, Booker T.

5:25

Washington, about quote unquote

5:27

the juvenile delinquents, Delinquents

5:31

like Satchel Paige, who, on July twenty

5:34

fourth, nineteen eighteen, at the age

5:36

of twelve, was sent to the Alabama

5:38

Reform School for Juvenile Negro

5:40

lawbreakers in Mount Meg's, Alabama.

5:44

He would be there for six years or

5:46

until his eighteenth birthday, whichever

5:48

came first. He thinks it's

5:50

the worst day of his life,

5:53

that he's being sentenced to school, he's

5:55

being sentenced to prison, so

5:57

he doesn't realize that in fact, this saved

6:00

his life. What we know now

6:02

is that the school, later known

6:04

as the alabam An Industrial School for

6:06

Negro Children, became a

6:08

place where thousands of Alabama's

6:11

black boys and girls were subjected

6:13

to abuse and torture in the name

6:15

of rehabilitation and reform.

6:18

But at its inception, the school was something

6:21

else, entirely a safe

6:23

haven for black children who would

6:25

have otherwise been thrown into adult prison.

6:33

I'm Josie Duffie Rice, and this

6:36

is Unreformed the story

6:38

of the Alabama Industrial School

6:40

for Negro Children. Episode

6:59

three, Cornelia's Dream.

7:07

Cornelia Bowen was the founder

7:09

of Mount Megs. And in order

7:12

to understand what Mount Meg's became, you

7:14

have to understand how it started Cornelia's

7:17

vision, and really

7:19

you have to understand this strange, remarkable

7:22

life. She lived a life that was

7:24

only possible during that one narrow

7:26

sliver of history as

7:28

slavery ended in the reconstruction

7:31

era began. Of myself

7:33

and the war I have done, there is not a great

7:35

deal to say. I was born

7:37

at Tuskegee, Alabama.

7:40

My mother lived the greater part of her life

7:42

at this place as the slave of

7:44

Colonel William Bowen. The

7:47

birthplace of my mother was Baltimore,

7:49

Maryland. She was taught to read

7:51

by her master's daughter in Baltimore

7:54

and was never forbidden to read by those

7:56

who owned her in Alabama.

8:00

That's Alabama born art historian

8:02

and professor Alvia Wardlaw. You'll

8:05

hear her reading Cornelia's words throughout this

8:07

episode. Cornelia

8:10

was born on the Bowen Plantation in

8:12

Macon County, Alabama, just east

8:14

of Montgomery. It's hard

8:16

to know exactly when. Some say

8:18

she was born in eighteen fifty eight, Others

8:21

think that it was more like eighteen sixty four,

8:24

and after going down a rabbit hole of census

8:26

records, I'm inclined to agree. This,

8:28

of course, is one of the casualties of

8:30

being black during slavery and in

8:32

the years after, records of

8:35

your life were sparse and inconsistent. We

8:38

don't know anything about Cornelia's father.

8:41

Some think he must have been a slave owner, but

8:43

there is really no way for us to know. But

8:46

what we do know is that her mother,

8:48

Sophia, was enslaved. Sophia

8:52

worked as a seamstress in the home of her

8:54

white slave owner, and later

8:56

Cornelia recalled that her mother wasn't

8:58

even allowed to talk to the people working

9:01

in the fields. Another

9:03

thing about Sophia she could read,

9:06

and later, when her three daughters were young,

9:08

she taught them to read too. On

9:11

Sundays, with my sisters gathered about

9:14

her knees, we would sit for

9:16

hours listening as mother would

9:18

read church hymns. These

9:20

days were days of freedom, as

9:22

I do not remember and know nothing of

9:24

those of slavery. My mother

9:27

always refrained from telling

9:29

her children frightful stories

9:31

of the awful sufferings of the slave

9:34

days. So Cornelia

9:37

was the child of an enslaved woman, and

9:39

her life turned out drastically different

9:41

than her mother's. In eighteen

9:43

eighty one, the state appropriated two

9:45

thousand dollars to start a black college in Macon

9:48

County. A white state

9:50

senator former Confederate, had

9:52

pushed for the appropriation himself, hoping

9:55

it would get him black votes. This

9:57

was during the post Reconstruction period

10:00

where black people had some voting rights

10:02

before they were taken away again, and

10:05

this was more evidence of what the right to

10:07

vote meant, at least some political

10:09

power, opportunity, and

10:11

sometimes education. Booker

10:15

T. Washington himself was the person tasked

10:17

with building this new college in Macon County.

10:20

He ended up purchasing the Bowen plantation

10:23

where Cornelia was born, the same

10:25

plantation where her mother was enslaved.

10:28

On it, he built the institute now

10:31

known as Tuskegee University and

10:33

historically black university that is renowned

10:35

to this day and in

10:38

eighteen eighty five, Cornelia

10:40

graduated with honors in Tuskegee's

10:42

first graduating class. To

10:45

my class that graduated in eighteen

10:47

eighty five, the first one

10:49

to graduate, we proudly boast

10:53

three Peabody Medals were awarded

10:55

for excellence in scholarship, and

10:57

I was awarded one of the medals.

11:00

Think for a second about how remarkable this

11:03

is. Here was a black woman getting

11:05

a college diploma on the very same

11:07

land her own mother had been a slave.

11:11

I don't know exactly what shaped Cornelia's

11:13

outlook on the world. Of course, we missed

11:16

each other by about a hundred years. But

11:18

in her records you can see the three main

11:21

influences that shaped her politics

11:23

and how she saw the world. The

11:26

first was her education, and

11:28

the second was her mentor, Booker

11:30

T. Washington. Mister

11:33

Washington himself took charge

11:35

of our classes, and I have

11:37

always been very proud that I

11:39

can say that he was my

11:42

teacher. If I have been

11:44

of any service to my people, I

11:46

owe it all to mister Washington, who

11:49

impressed upon me those

11:51

lessons which led me to want to

11:53

spend myself in the helping of

11:56

my people. Here's Booker

11:58

T. In nineteen o eight, reading an

12:00

excerpt of a speech he gave in eighteen

12:02

ninety five. It was his most

12:05

famous, called the Atlanta Compromise,

12:08

and this is the only known audio recording

12:10

of his voice. He did not train that

12:12

in the first years of All New Life. He

12:14

began at the top because of the fun it's

12:17

hard to hear him, I know, not great sound

12:19

quality in the early nineteen hundreds, But

12:22

what he's basically saying is that black people

12:24

were too focused on political power and

12:26

intellectual pursuits and not

12:29

focused enough on earning money or

12:31

learning a trade, or

12:33

in his words, that the political convention

12:36

or stump speaking had more attractions

12:38

than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.

12:42

Note that he's literally giving a speech

12:44

when he says that. It's

12:46

a confusing thing to say when he only

12:48

got his university because the local

12:51

state senator needed black votes. But

12:53

Booker t always had a shall we

12:55

say, controversial perspective on

12:58

how black people should function in a post

13:00

slavery America where racism

13:02

ran rampant and equality remained

13:05

a pipe dream. He was essentially

13:07

the father of respectability politics.

13:10

He spent a lot of time focused on what black

13:12

people were doing wrong. He liked

13:14

to tell black people to work harder to get a hobby,

13:17

and this perspective was a foundation on which

13:19

Booker T's philosophy of industrial education

13:22

was built. Part of the

13:24

theory behind industrial education was respectability

13:27

and an attempt to make black people indispensable.

13:31

People like Cornelia and Booker T encourage

13:34

black people to focus on trade work, and

13:36

basically what that meant was that even

13:38

though black folks had been freed from the practice

13:41

of slavery, they should still arm

13:43

themselves with similar skills that

13:45

they practiced on the plantation. Cornelia

13:48

was an early and avid supporter of Booker

13:50

T. Washington's philosophy of industrial

13:52

education, So in eighteen eighty

13:55

eight, when Washington himself requested

13:57

that Cornelia moved to wa to teach,

14:00

she did it. Wa Waugh

14:05

was this poor black community about fifteen

14:07

miles outside of Montgomery. It

14:10

was there that Cornelia founded her first school,

14:12

the Colored Institute, almost

14:14

twenty years before she founded Mount Meg's. Not

14:18

one person in the whole community

14:20

owned a foot of land, and

14:23

heavy crop mortgages were the burden

14:25

of every farmer. It

14:27

became evident at once that pioneer

14:30

work was very much needed, homes

14:33

were neglected, and the sacredness

14:36

of family life was unknown

14:38

to most of the people. While

14:41

there, Cornelia began getting more involved

14:43

with local women's clubs, the

14:45

third thing that shaped her worldview. Cornelia

14:48

never married, had no kids, which

14:51

was unusual for the time, but she

14:53

had a very, very full social

14:55

life. She was part of seemingly

14:58

endless organizations and in leadership

15:00

positions of many of them. Most

15:03

notably, she became president of the alab

15:05

i am, a federation of Colored women's clubs,

15:08

an exclusive organization for black

15:10

women focused on service. Their

15:13

slogan was lifting as we climb, but

15:16

this idea that as you climb

15:18

a ladder, even if you're at

15:20

the top of the ladder, those folks who

15:22

were at the bottom are still yours. They're

15:24

still connected to you. That's doctor

15:27

Denise Davis May, Chair and professor

15:29

of social work at Alabama State University

15:32

and an expert on these women's clubs. The

15:34

women of the National Association

15:36

of Colored Women's Clubs

15:39

were typically

15:41

second and third generation middle

15:43

class women, even in the eighteen nineties.

15:46

I think when we talk about the eighteen nineties

15:48

and we talk about black women, particularly

15:50

in the South, we envision

15:53

share cropping. We envision women

15:56

who are just out of enslavement

15:59

and have a very particular image of what that

16:01

might be. These women were

16:03

educated. They attended

16:06

some of the established at

16:08

the time, not historically black colleges but

16:11

now historically black colleges and universities.

16:14

They were married to professionals

16:16

in some of their rights. They were professional

16:18

educators in theory.

16:21

The Colored Institute was a school, but

16:23

ultimately it was more than that. At

16:26

just twenty three, Cornelia was sent to law

16:28

to essentially fix the people

16:30

there, their homes, their families,

16:33

their perspectives, their lives. And

16:36

she took this role very seriously. She

16:39

went from house to house each week to make sure

16:41

that they were clean. She inspected

16:44

children in the morning to make sure that they had neat

16:46

hair and clean fingernails. She

16:48

dealt with family disputes. She

16:51

pushed the men to work and the women to

16:53

stay home. I am

16:55

pleased with the progress the people have made.

16:59

Many now own their own homes,

17:01

and eight and ten persons are no longer

17:03

content to sleep in one room

17:06

log cabins. I know

17:08

what I'm saying when I state that sacred

17:10

family ties are respected

17:13

and appreciated as never before

17:16

in this immediate region. Years

17:19

later, in a newspaper interview, she stated

17:21

proudly that a large part of her success

17:24

could be attributed to one particular tactic,

17:26

shaming people. There were

17:29

some class based issues

17:31

in terms of how they serve the community.

17:35

That is definitely correct. As

17:37

a black woman in Alabama, Cornelia was

17:40

among the most disadvantaged demographic in

17:42

the country, the bottom of

17:44

the barrel. And yet

17:46

among black women there

17:48

were differences. Some had

17:50

more power than others, and at

17:52

the top of that list was Cornelia.

17:59

Her work at the Colored Institute turned her into

18:01

somewhat of a celebrity. There

18:03

are all these articles from the late at hundreds

18:05

of her traveling the country, giving speeches

18:08

and raising money and hobnobbing

18:10

with people whose names we know today, Harriet

18:13

Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Ida

18:15

B. Wells. There

18:18

she is in eighteen ninety six, being

18:20

named president of the National Federation of Afro

18:22

American Women. In nineteen

18:24

oh four at the World's Fair, traveling

18:27

the country to speak in Boston and Chicago.

18:29

In New York, giving speeches

18:31

to path rooms, she

18:34

was the subject of a long fawning profile

18:36

in The Washington Post in nineteen oh five,

18:39

framed as the good, classy Negro woman

18:42

helping the poor ones. The

18:44

Montgomery Advertiser described her as

18:46

the Booker Washington among colored women.

18:53

Cornelia was complicated. On

18:56

one hand, she was responsible for so much

18:58

good At the Colored Institute

19:00

and later at Mount Meg's. Cornelia provided

19:02

a level of attention, assistance,

19:04

and opportunity to so many Black people

19:07

when they never could have afforded otherwise. She

19:10

really did care about the community, and

19:13

still she looked down on them. Like

19:16

her mentor book or t Cornelia

19:18

seemed to believe that true social

19:21

and legal equality was an arm's

19:23

reach of black people. All

19:25

we had to do was be a little better, a

19:27

little more useful, make a little

19:29

more money, work a little harder,

19:32

and white people might just come around.

19:36

In one speech, Cornelia told the audience,

19:39

we cannot be respected till we

19:41

learn to do something. White

19:43

men will not respect you. I

19:46

would not respect you myself. And

19:48

unsurprisingly, Cornelia's

19:50

willingness to be critical of black people gained

19:53

the admiration of more than a few white

19:55

ones. After all,

19:57

Cornelia had the tendency to attribute

20:00

the black community struggles to their own failings

20:03

rather than persistent, systemic and justice

20:06

and centuries of slavery that had

20:08

ended just a few years prior, a

20:11

child of a slave basically preaching

20:13

about bootstraps. The

20:16

question is did Cornelia really believe

20:19

the stuff that she was saying publicly. I'm

20:22

inclined to believe that she did, But it's

20:24

also possible she was playing politics,

20:27

saying the things that white people wanted to hear

20:30

the only way she could get what she wanted

20:32

from the people who were really in power. So

20:35

these women understood the necessity

20:37

to work in community with the

20:40

women who had the ear of

20:43

people who were in charge. Right,

20:45

that's not very different than today. You

20:48

need to be able to establish relationships

20:51

with the folks who are sitting at the dinner table with

20:53

the man who signs the probate

20:56

for your land. Cornelia

20:59

has been running the Colored Institute for more than ten

21:01

years. When she gets interested in a new

21:03

project, she and

21:06

her club want to help build a juvenile

21:08

reformatory. When I

21:10

was researching Cornelia, there was one thing that kept

21:12

nagging at me. Here she was

21:14

president of her woman's club, principle

21:17

of a growing school, adored by the community,

21:20

and often outspokenly critical

21:23

of black youth. So why suddenly

21:25

start this school for quote unquote juvenile

21:27

delinquents. Then

21:30

I stumbled upon a document in old

21:32

files from the nineteen sixties, and

21:35

it began to answer this question. At

21:53

the turn of the twentieth century, four boys

21:55

are arrested in Birmingham accused

21:57

of breaking and entering. One of

21:59

them is just eleven years old. Now,

22:03

had they been white, they would have gone to the reformatory

22:06

for white boys, which had been created

22:08

after a white women's club champion the project.

22:11

But these four boys were black, which

22:13

meant that there was no place for them to go except

22:15

adult prison. This

22:18

is what inspires Cornelia's Club to build

22:20

a juvenile reformatory for black children.

22:22

Then the state of Alabama, black

22:25

youngsters as early as aged

22:27

ten ten years old had

22:30

been sentenced to male prisons,

22:33

and the women concluded

22:35

that if they were going to save an endangered

22:38

population, which was the young black

22:40

males, they needed to open a

22:43

reformatory where young black

22:45

males could be sent. By

22:47

the early nineteen hundreds, reform schools

22:49

were part of a growing movement across the United

22:52

States and the world, as progressives

22:54

began to talk about the concept of children

22:57

as a class of people in their own right. That's

23:00

significant because before the twentieth

23:02

century, there weren't many formal legal

23:04

distinctions between adults and miners,

23:07

and that persisted for black kids. Black

23:11

children in particular, were

23:13

typically treated just like adults. They

23:15

were sentenced just like adults, they were put

23:17

in the same prisons with adults, and

23:19

they were executed just like adults.

23:21

That's Barry Feld, Professor

23:24

emeritus at the University of Minnesota

23:26

Law School. As the United

23:28

States at the end of the nineteenth century

23:30

was switching, shifting

23:33

from a primarily agricultural

23:35

economy to a more industrial

23:37

economy, and so the progressive reformers

23:40

had adopted a new conception

23:42

of childhood as vulnerable and innocent.

23:46

Well, at least some children were seen as vulnerable

23:48

and innocent, but not Black

23:50

kids, who study show society

23:53

has always perceived as older

23:55

and more adult than they are. So

23:58

Cornelia School was meant to fill

24:00

a long overlooked void in the care of

24:02

black Alabamian children. She

24:05

gave a statement to the local paper saying

24:08

that she and the members of the women's clubs

24:10

were building a school for so called juvenile

24:12

delinquents, or, as she

24:15

put it, the unfortunate

24:17

and floating young element of our race,

24:20

who, from lack of good home training,

24:22

find their way to jail penitentiaries

24:25

and convict minds. It

24:28

is conceded that children thrown among

24:31

hardened criminals are made

24:33

worse in character by unwholesome

24:35

environments, and in the end proved

24:38

themselves criminals rather than useful

24:40

citizens. Black

24:42

reformatories weren't necessarily popular,

24:45

but they had support across a white spectrum.

24:48

In nineteen o seven, my local paper, The

24:50

Atlanta Constitution, supported

24:52

a reformatory for black kids in the most

24:54

racist way possible. Quote.

24:57

The necessity for such a specific treatment

25:00

is even more powerfully applicable to the Negro

25:02

than to the white race. The

25:04

Negro youth is essentially racially

25:07

of a roving, irresponsible, impulsive,

25:09

susceptible temperament. The

25:12

race itself is but half child.

25:15

Cornelia and the club ladies raised two

25:18

thousand dollars on their own to build their own

25:20

school, and when they couldn't get

25:22

anyone to give them land, Cornelia already

25:24

had a solution. She

25:26

owned four hundred acres outside of Montgomery,

25:29

a feat for any black person, let

25:32

alone a black woman, and

25:34

she agreed to sell twenty acres to the club

25:36

for less money than she paid for it. On

25:42

August eighteenth, nineteen oh seven,

25:45

the Alabama Industrial School for

25:47

Negro Boys opened, but

25:50

there wasn't much press about it, at

25:52

least that I could find, except

25:54

in a magazine called The Colored American,

25:57

in an article called child Saving

25:59

in Alabama. The magazine

26:01

praised the school, and this

26:04

article has a picture of the school. It's

26:06

the only one we have from that era. In

26:09

it, you can see about twenty black boys

26:11

standing stoically in two rows,

26:14

their faces shadowed by the sun. Behind

26:17

them is a white house, the same

26:19

white building I saw when I went to Mount Megs,

26:22

And in front of them is a field of cotton.

26:30

The following year, Cornelia gave

26:32

a proud assessment at a conference at Tuskegee.

26:35

The school has twenty two boys

26:38

and no bolts or bars.

26:40

The boys work in the garden. Cornelia

26:44

saw the school as a place that gives black children

26:46

a chance at opportunity, a

26:48

much better and even life saving

26:50

alternative to prison. But

26:53

there was a problem money.

26:56

Despite the good things about Mount Megs,

26:58

even at the start, it was struggling financially.

27:02

Cornelia had a lot of money for a black woman

27:04

at the time, but again it's

27:06

all relative. She didn't have money

27:08

to keep an entire school afloat, and

27:10

while the clubs spent a lot of time raising

27:13

funds, it was simply not enough to keep

27:15

the school going. But

27:17

Cornelia was determined to keep Mount Mag's

27:20

open, So just three years

27:22

after the doors opened, Cornelia

27:24

began lobbying the state to take over Mount

27:27

Mag's. I besieged

27:29

every member of the legislature. It

27:32

was funny. I would send in from the

27:34

lobby for a member. Of course

27:36

he would not know, but what it was a

27:38

white woman asking for him, and

27:41

he would come out. Then he

27:43

would ask what I wanted, and I would

27:45

say, we have a bill prepared

27:48

to make an appropriation for a reformatory

27:50

for Negro children, and I

27:52

want you to vote for it. And

27:55

I wouldn't let him go until I

27:57

had his promise to vote for it

27:59

if it came up. This

28:01

was where Cornelia's connections came in

28:03

handy, especially her connections

28:06

to white people. She

28:08

lobbied judges, legislators, and

28:10

other prominent white men in the community to

28:13

support the state's takeover, and

28:15

not just privately but publicly, and

28:18

many of them did it. One

28:21

headline read juvenile Reformatory

28:23

at Mount Megs is endorsed by many

28:25

prominent white men. In

28:28

fact, the fact that Cornelia had connections

28:30

with powerful white people was the only reason

28:32

she was able to build Mount Megs at all. And

28:35

Alabama, even the most successful

28:37

black people needed white approval

28:39

to do almost anything. Even

28:42

with the money raised within the black community,

28:44

they still needed the support and approval

28:47

of the institutions beyond

28:50

the black community. In nineteen

28:52

eleven, the state of Alabama

28:55

officially took over Mount Megs. This

28:58

may have been the biggest mistake of Cornelia

29:00

Bowen's life. The

29:02

institution was able to stay alive,

29:06

but at an unimaginable cost, and

29:09

Mount Meg's was irreparably changed.

29:12

There's this quote from one of those white men who

29:14

supported the state takeover, a

29:17

quote that I think about a lot now. It

29:20

foreshadowed the future of the institution.

29:24

It says, I've always felt that when

29:26

you put a young boy in jail or in the

29:28

penitentiary for any length of time,

29:31

you went a long way toward killing a

29:33

human soul. Oh done

29:40

back on meds

29:47

all librate.

29:53

Cornelia, it seems, had only good intentions.

29:56

The school needed funding that she and her club

29:58

in her community couldn't sustainably provide.

30:01

But almost immediately after the state took

30:04

over, there were early side that the way

30:06

that they thought about the black kids in their care

30:08

was drastically different than Cornelia's outlook.

30:11

The first change, renaming

30:13

the school the Alabama

30:16

Industrial School for Negro Boys, would

30:18

now be called the Alabama Reform

30:21

School for Juvenile Negro

30:23

Lawbreakers. Cornelia

30:26

remained intimately involved with Mount Meg's

30:28

for years as a trustee until

30:31

she died in nineteen thirty four, but

30:33

the real power always remained with the

30:35

white male board members, men

30:38

with connections wealth and land,

30:41

men who saw Mount Meg's as a way to generate

30:43

money, not rehabilitate children.

30:46

And this is an important thing to note about

30:48

Mount Meg's. Sure, the state

30:50

agreed to take it over, but

30:52

that didn't mean they were going to fund it, not

30:55

sufficiently anyway, not

30:57

like they funded the white schools. We

30:59

mentioned this last episode. When

31:02

the white schools needed something, they'd

31:04

asked the state for money. But

31:07

when Mount Megs needed something schoolbooks,

31:10

medicine, teachers, working

31:13

toilets, clean water, the

31:16

state mostly expected them to pick enough cotton

31:18

to get it themselves. I

31:21

wondered if Cornelian knew what she was doing handing

31:23

the school over to the state of Alabama,

31:25

if she expected Mount Megs's fall to

31:27

be so swift, So to expect

31:30

that, as Miss Bowen and other

31:33

individuals begin to

31:35

retire out and transition out,

31:38

you now have the state system

31:40

responsible for the well being of these

31:42

children, and to expect

31:45

that they would do so respectfully

31:47

and in love. In Jim Crow,

31:49

Alabama is cotta insane

31:53

given the context of where

31:55

we're located, and how might

31:57

the women who made Mount Meg's possible have

32:00

felt about what this school became.

32:03

They created the

32:05

Mountain Meg's a formatory for colored

32:07

boys because they didn't trust anybody

32:10

else to do it, And I would

32:12

think that they would not be surprised.

32:15

I think they would be upset that

32:17

we allowed it to happen. I

32:20

think they would be upset that we allowed it to happen.

32:24

When I was reading or talking to people about their

32:26

personal experiences at Mount Meg's, I

32:29

had to keep reminding myself that it was a school,

32:31

because by the time Lonnie, Mary, Jenny,

32:34

and Johnny were all incarcerated there in

32:36

the nineteen sixties, Mount Meg's had become

32:38

something very different. What more

32:40

than one person called a slave camp.

32:43

But it hadn't always been like that, not

32:46

that bad. Even after

32:48

the school was handed over to the state, it

32:50

maintained some level of humanity, at

32:53

least at the beginning. So

32:58

let's go back to nineteen eighteen, when,

33:01

at the age of twelve, Satchel Page was

33:03

arrested and sentenced to six years

33:05

at Mount Meg's. The charge

33:08

boys, who at the time were exemplary

33:10

fellow students, were trusted

33:12

to transport him fifteen miles in a wagon

33:15

to Mount Meg's. Here's

33:19

author Donald Spivey again he

33:21

sees the plays. It

33:23

is clear that this is

33:26

not what he thought it

33:28

would be. He was looking for some plays, probably

33:30

with bars and all

33:32

of that sort of right, and

33:35

there were no bars,

33:38

no bars, no cells. Instead,

33:42

Satchel found a meal, clothes

33:44

and a pair of shoes waiting for him, hand

33:47

me downs that to him looked brand new.

33:50

The boys had to adhere to a strict routine

33:53

sunrise, wake up, morning, prayer, breakfast,

33:56

and then chores like feeding the livestock

33:59

or mending the buildings, or cleaning the schoolroom

34:01

or harvesting the crops. The

34:03

rest of the time, the boys works affected to

34:06

be in the schoolroom, learning arithmetic,

34:08

reading and writing a classic

34:10

book, or t industrial education. This

34:13

model actually worked in the case

34:15

of Satchell Page. Perhaps

34:18

that's because during Satchell's time there, Cornelia

34:20

Bowen's influence still permeated the school.

34:24

She didn't run the school anymore, but she remained

34:26

on the board and was still closely involved,

34:28

and Satchell became one of Cornelia's favorite

34:31

students. Good behavior

34:33

earned Satchel the privilege of joining the Mount

34:35

Meg's baseball team, a group

34:38

of boys with a special place in Cornelia's

34:40

heart. She's the one who

34:42

believes that baseball sports

34:44

can be a reclamation project,

34:47

so this is a reward for

34:50

the boys, but it's also a teaching

34:52

tool to get them to understand

34:54

sportsmanship, to understand

34:57

working together, and

34:59

it's a process that she uses

35:01

quite effectively. Satchel Page,

35:04

the legendary Picture, learned

35:06

how to play baseball at Mount Meg's.

35:12

Playing baseball open Satchel's world.

35:15

The team traveled to play games sometimes,

35:17

and there were big picnics where Mount Meg's students

35:19

and the surrounding community would come out to

35:22

cheer them on. And

35:25

when Satchel left Mount Meg's five years later,

35:29

the story is that he had been transformed

35:31

for the better. And he came

35:33

out with a nice pair of shoes and

35:36

clothes. And I forget how much they gave you

35:38

back, Dan a couple of dollars. And

35:40

it knew how to pitch, he said, If

35:43

training five years of my life to learn how

35:45

to pitch like this, it was well

35:47

worth it. The year Satchel

35:49

arrives, Mount Meg's seems to be a

35:51

success story. The

35:53

reformatory is doing splendid work, said

35:56

one nineteen eighteen article. Substantial

35:59

improvement has been made, said another. Cornelia

36:02

in the club are thinking of starting a school

36:05

just like for girls. But

36:08

in the end there were so few Satchel

36:10

pages, it seems

36:12

way likelier that most of the kids

36:14

were Lonnies and Jennies and Johnnies

36:17

and Mary's. By nineteen

36:19

twenty, everything at Mount Meg's was being rationed,

36:22

from the tools to the food, and

36:24

even with money from the state, the

36:26

Federation of Women still had to fundraise

36:29

to cover infrastructure and faculty

36:31

salaries. Farming,

36:33

which was once just part of the industrial education

36:36

model, quickly became the school's

36:38

primary source of income. That

36:41

made the boy's labor essential to keeping

36:43

the school in operation. In

36:45

nineteen twenty, the governor of Alabama wrote

36:47

to the school informing them that he

36:49

was prepared to parole some of the boys. The

36:52

school's assistant superintendent, JR.

36:55

Wingfield responded, discouraging

36:57

the governor from releasing five of the boys

37:00

because he needed them to operate the machinery.

37:03

He wrote, I would like for the Governor to

37:05

withhold his actions until we can train

37:07

a boy to take each of these places.

37:10

I hope that you will understand my position clearly.

37:13

I do not object to parolling the boys.

37:16

They might wait just a little while till we can

37:18

get their places filled, rather than

37:20

disarrange and inconvenience everything.

37:24

This was what Mount Meg's became, a labor

37:26

camp for black children and yet

37:29

another way for black work to generate

37:31

white money. The state told

37:33

students they were there for their own improvement,

37:36

but it was glaringly clear that they were there

37:38

for the benefit of Alabama. With

37:41

the state's dependence on the unpaid labor

37:43

of its black child prisoners, Mount

37:46

Meg's mission shifted from rehabilitating

37:48

its words to exploiting them.

37:52

But the violence at Mount Meg's was often met

37:54

with resistance. Starting

37:56

even in Sachil Pages Day notices

37:58

started appearing in the local newspapers,

38:01

ratcheting up through the fifties and sixties.

38:04

They said things like six armed

38:06

Negroes escaped Mount Meg's Industrial

38:08

School, or police seeking escape

38:10

artist in Burglary running

38:13

away was a regular part of the Mount Meg's

38:15

experience. On

38:17

the next episode of Unreformed, we hear

38:19

about these escapes and we look

38:21

at one in particular and its harrowing

38:24

consequences. Unreformed,

38:30

The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for

38:32

Negro Children is a production of School

38:34

of Humans and iHeartMedia. This episode

38:37

was written by me Josie Deffie, Rice and Taylor

38:39

von Leslie. Our script supervisors

38:41

Florence Burrow Adams, and our producer is Gabby Watts,

38:43

who had additional writing and production support from

38:46

Sherry Scott. Executive producers of

38:48

Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, Brandon Barr,

38:50

Matt Arnette and Knee. Sound design

38:52

and mixes by Jesse Niswanger. Music

38:54

is by Ben Soli. Additional recordings

38:56

our courtesy of the Alabama Center for Traditional

38:58

Culture. The song featured in this episode

39:00

is Jesus My Only Friend by Mary le Bandolf.

39:03

Cornelia Bowen was voiced by ALBI Award Special

39:06

Things to the Alabima Department of Archives and History,

39:08

Michael Harriet, Floyd Hall, Kevin Nutt, Van

39:10

Newkirk, and all of the survivors of Mount Meg's

39:13

willing to share their stories. If

39:15

you are someone you know attendant Mount Megs and would like to be

39:17

in contact, please email Mountmegs Podcast

39:20

at gmail dot com. That's Mt M

39:22

e i G S Podcast at gmail

39:24

dot com.

39:41

School of Humans