The Florida School for Boys, later renamed the Alfred G Dozier School for Boys, was a prison reform school/labor camp that operated from 1900 – 2011. It was known for its brutal conditions which included reports of beatings, rapes and forced labor. When it opened, children as young as 5 were held in shackles and chains. Over the decades, boys died, disappeared, and tried to runaway. Located in Marianna, Florida, site of the 1934 spectacle lynching of Claude Neal, the school was segregated with the black boys doing the brunt of the labor work. They picked cotton, sawed trees, made bricks and worked in the fields. They received no pay; local businesses profited off their labor. Discipline was achieved by instilling terror and fear through brutal beatings which often occurred at a building called the White House. Despite complaints, media investigations, and survivors coming forward, the school remained open until 2011, when the state, citing budgetary reasons, close the facility. Many survivors came forward to tell their stories, but these were mostly white men. In 2013, several black men who survived Dozier, visited the old school and testified to what they saw and endured. Many of them had no idea why they were sent to Dozier in the first place. But the experience marked them for life. The state of Florida trafficked these children and placed them into forced labor, a state sponsored form of human trafficking. My photographs and interviews with some of the men were published in Mother Jones in 2014. American writer Colson Whitehead’s novel "The Nickel Boys" is based on the history of Dozier and won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The video, playing below, was made for an exhibition in 2023 at the Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa, Florida.
Exhibitions: USF Contemporary Art Museum Poor People's Art" A (Short) Visual History of Poverty in the United States Curated by Christian Viveros- Fauné January 13 - March 4, 2023
The Florida School for Boys, later renamed the Alfred G Dozier School for Boys, was a prison reform school/labor camp that operated from 1900 – 2011. It was known for its brutal conditions which included reports of beatings, rapes and forced labor. When it opened, children as young as 5 were held in shackles and chains. Over the decades, boys died, disappeared, and tried to runaway. Located in Marianna, Florida, site of the 1934 spectacle lynching of Claude Neal, the school was segregated with the black boys doing the brunt of the labor work. They picked cotton, sawed trees, made bricks and worked in the fields. They received no pay; local businesses profited off their labor. Discipline was achieved by instilling terror and fear through brutal beatings which often occurred at a building called the White House. Despite complaints, media investigations, and survivors coming forward, the school remained open until 2011, when the state, citing budgetary reasons, close the facility. Many survivors came forward to tell their stories, but these were mostly white men. In 2013, several black men who survived Dozier, visited the old school and testified to what they saw and endured. Many of them had no idea why they were sent to Dozier in the first place. But the experience marked them for life. The state of Florida trafficked these children and placed them into forced labor, a state sponsored form of human trafficking. My photographs and interviews with some of the men were published in Mother Jones in 2014. American writer Colson Whitehead’s novel "The Nickel Boys" is based on the history of Dozier and won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Exhibitions: USF Contemporary Art Museum Poor People's Art" A (Short) Visual History of Poverty in the United States Curated by Christian Viveros- Fauné January 13 - March 4, 2023
Richard Huntly and John Bonner get their first look at the now abandoned cottages where they were housed while doing slave labor at what was once the Florida School for Boys. 2013
Inside and outside the former black boys cottages at the Arthur Dozier School for Boys. 2013
John Bonner pauses to reflect after stepping foot for the first time at the now abandoned cottages where he was housed while doing slave labor at the former Dozier school for boys. 2013
Leo Collier, 84, Johnny Gaddy, 68, Richard Huntly, 67 and John Bonner,61 gather at the now abandoned cottages where they were housed while doing slave labor at what was once the Florida School for Boys. 2013
Inside a cottage at the Arthur Dozier School for Boys, 2013
Inside a cottage at the Arthur Dozier School for Boys, 2013
The Church at Arthur Dozier School for Boys, 2013
Richard Huntly and John Bonner at one of Dozier's former cottages, 2013
John Bonner looks out over barbed wire fencing at what was once the White House, where he was brutally beaten while sentenced at Dozier, 2013
The White House building where former child residents of the Dozier School for Boys claim they were routinely and brutally beaten, 2013
Cottage, Dozier School, 2013
Fields between the black boys cottages where boys used to run to try and escape from the Arthur Dozier School for Boys, 2013
John Bonner and Richard Huntly, 2013
Richard Huntly finds a boot that looked like the ones he used to wear when he was a child at the Arthur Dozier School for Boys, 2013
Dozier School, 2013
Richard Huntly, 67, at his home in Orlando, Florida, 2013. Huntly formed the "Black boys of Dozier" a survivor group that recognizes the experience of the thousands of black boys who were sent to the Dozier Reform School and forced to work in slave like conditions and endure brutal beatings. He had ben taken away as a child at 10 years old. The experience left him scarred for life. . The institution opened in 1901 and was shut down in 2011 amid repeated scandals and reports of severe brutality and slave labor. Thousands of boys, most of them black, living in segregated conditions until 1968, passed through Dozier. This year, graves on the site were being exhumed to determine whether several boys who had disappeared, were buried on the site.
Nina Berman Photography
Nina Berman, documentary photographer, photojournalist, filmmaker, Professor at Columbia University Journalism School, artist, Whitney Biennial