Posted on 12/11/2012 8:48:37 AM PST by null and void
One of the great accomplishments of my life, was staying out of Gatesville reform school as my friends were taken away one by one, my friends used to tell horror stories in the early 1960s, by the late 1960s and early 1970s they were suffering early deaths.
Reform school for the boys, and chain gangs for the adults. Texas used to be a rough place, even in the 1950s and 1960s.
Parts of it still are. Like Jacksboro Highway on a Saturday night.
/johnny
so, the same people who concluded back in 2009 that there was "no foul play"?
The associated video is well worth watching.
“Institutional care” is an unnatural and dangerous combination, as all of America will be learning now.
Precisely.
Want a side bet on what they'll find when the exact same bloody-handed people investigate themselves again?
Is Florida a SWIVED UP State or what!? We in Iowa got RID of our “reform schools” and the like in the EARLY 70s.
Even as a kid I read the daily papers, and in Houston, the excitement and killings and shootings for whites seemed to be concentrated on Airline drive and Hempstead, and I couldn’t wait to go and experience the strangeness and intensity of those strips of bars and clubs, although the drinking age back then was 21, I was lucky enough to join that world at age 17.
The white hot intensity of redneck bars started dying out by the early 1970s, there was still the occasional shootings and stabbings, and beatings, but the violence of the old days that color so much of the old country western songs, disappeared long ago.
I will never forget what it was like to move to Southern California, and see people sign their name on a chalk board to politely wait their turn to challenge the guy holding the pool table, it took a long time for me to realize that it was real. Another sign of civilization in California, was going to the bathroom, and not having to look for position and weapons (like the urinal farthest from the door or the lid on the toilet tank).
My Father had a First Cousin who was sent there. He was sort of the family black sheep and always in trouble. He was a great musician tho.
According to Daddy, he was not a bad kid at all but got into some fairly minor trouble and the judge decided to make an example of him apparently hoping to straighten him out.
Instead he came out a hardened criminal and remained so the rest of his life. He did maintain his good nature tho and was generally well liked despite his record.
Rather than leave criminals to sit and watch tv in jail I’d prefer seeing prisoners working chain gangs along highways etc.
Here in Florida non violents are doing all sorts of road work for the counties.
Let me see the Reform School was open from early 1900 to 2009? Lots of people get sick and in institutions disease spreads rapidly. In the early 1900’s a lot of people died from disease!!!
I agree, I remember sitting for long periods and watching the chain gangs during my youth, a well run chain-gang is beneficial and healthy.
I was associated with TYC in the late 70s and visited there days before it was closed. It was down to the very last handful who were there waiting to serve the remainder of their time in the military or behind real prison bars - their choice. Some of the guys started running their mouths and bam! it turned into an all out riot. I’m guessing that cost them the military option. The girls (not at Gatesville, obviously) were 10 times worse than the guys. They’d just as soon gouge your eyes out as to look at you. The “school” facilities were ticking time bombs with the counselors in charge only at the pleasure of the little thugs.
A lot of these are deaths that were not documented. The families in some cases were told that the child ran away, but they never heard from them again. So the belief is that some of the children were murdered by their keepers and buried in the unmarked, undocumented graves.
“Lots of people get sick and in institutions disease spreads rapidly.”
Those have been accounted for. Recorded and tallied.
The issue is the SURPLUS number of graves, if that is what they are, and if the remains are modern.
I walked into the restroom at The Brown Derby in Hollywood.
Three urinals, a big black dude at urinal #1, a big black dude at urinal #2. The see me come in, look at each other and nod.
At that point I just knew what was coming.
I step up to #3 and no sooner did I get started than -sure enough- the guy on the end says, "Man that water's cold!"
The guy in the middle says "Sucker's deep, too!"
To which I blandly replied: "Oh, it's not that deep..."
They darn near peed themselves laughing.
A lot of things changed in America by the late 1970s, that goes for the mental hospitals also.
Sounds like Tucker Prison Farm down in Arkansas back in the 1960s when quite a few unmarked graves were found there.
My dad lived in terror that we would be sent to a “reform school”, so he dragged us kicking and screaming from wonderful New Mexico to a farm in the back hills of Arkansas. We had never been in trouble before but he just got that idea in his head and Bam! - in the tick infested Ozarks we ended up.
True, but it is intersting that it usually plays a role in any systematic cruel and unusual abuse. Check out prison rape for punishment.
Surplus numbers?
They probably didn’t keep very good records turn of the Century I mean early 1900’s.. This is about money!!! I believe!!!!! I bring a suit nobody still alive to defend themselves automatic money from the State!!!!
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