Florida lawmakers could give $40 million to survivors of infamous Dozier school for boys

Sixty-two years after his release, Charlie Fudge still gets emotional talking about the abuse he endured inside “the white house” at Florida’s Dozier School for boys when he was just 12 years old.

“I received a beating of 31 lashes with a leather strap. That was just a beating unmerciful. I’ve lived with that, and still live with that today—how someone as big as these guys were, that was in charge, could take and beat a little child, a 12-year-old soul, with that kind of beating,” Fudge, 74, told WMNF Tampa 88.5-FM last Friday, fighting back tears. “It’s something that stays with you your whole life.”

Boys, some as young as five years old, were sent to the school for crimes as minor and vague as truancy and incorrigibility. Their labor was used to work land gifted to Jackson County. By the 1960s, Dozier was the largest reform school in the U.S. The prisoners—segregated in the Jim Crow era—went to school one day and worked the next.

Gene Oker, who did four years at Dozier between 1956-1960, told the radio station’s public affairs program “The Skinny” that they didn’t even have teachers. “We did our own work. We taught ourselves in school,” he said.

Author Richard Huntly Sr. told WMNF that Black boys did have teachers who used the passages in the Book of Proverbs to remind them to obey their masters. “You know, whatever your master want you to do to you. If he slapped you on one side, you turn your face—we was taught that kind of stuff,” Huntly, who is President of Black Boys at Dozier Reform School, added.

Oker once got 35 lashes in the white house and said that the pain of the first lash is indescribable. “It went all through your body, every inch of your body—that pain was unbelievable,” he added.

That agony, the abuse, and the wounds acquired at the Marianna “reform school” were chronicled in Pulitzer-nominated 2009 reporting, turned into a Pulitzer-winning novel 10 years later, and explored in even more detail on the pages of “We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys,” a 2022 a book by University of South Florida forensic anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle.

Fudge is the president of The Official White House Boys Organization, which for the last decade has acted as a support group for boys who were sent to Dozier. “It’s kind of an outlet to get out the things that we’ve dealt with our whole lives, to understand each other and love each other,” he said of the collective.

And while the 1,400-acre school closed in 2011 after more than a century in operation, survivors of the Dozier school—of which Fudge estimates there are 200-300—could get some semblance of justice before the end of next year’s legislative session in the Florida Capitol.

Companion “Victims of Reform School Abuse” bills—SB 24 and HB 21, filed by State Sen. Daryl Rouson and Rep. Michelle Saltzman, respectively—are different from past failed legislative attempts to remedy the abuses at Dozier.

If passed in both chambers and signed by the governor, the law would require victims of Florida reform school abuse—or specified descendants of the abused—to apply for certification by a certain date. The state would then be required to review and process the application within a certain timeframe and determine whether or not the applicant is eligible for crime victim compensation.

Troy Rafferty, a lawyer whose firm crafted the initial draft of the legislation, told WMNF that records issues—for instance, at least 55 burials at Dozier have no recorded information in state-issued plot maps or other documents—means that the process won’t be easy.

“It’s all being pieced back together,” Rafferty said about the history around Dozier. “It is a step, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

Rep. Saltzman—a Republican who separately, and unrelatedly, recently said controversial statements about the Israel-Hamas conflict—revealed that she feels good about the legislation’s chances at passing since she’s part of the supermajority. The senate had, in past years, agreed on money needed for victims, Saltzman added, while the house had previously failed to land on a figure.

“The difference this year in the bill is the house has actually allocated the 40 million [dollars] that’s needed to provide the funds to these people if they were to apply to get this money. So that’s a huge step in the right direction,” Saltzman said, adding that she also workshopped a way for survivors to get a GED through the department of education. She also tried to find ways to go after law enforcement who committed crimes at Dozier; statutes of limitations, she noted, might get in the way.

“The speaker would really, really, really like to see us be able to go after some of these people if they’re still alive. He used the words, ‘I don’t care if they’re 80 years old and in a walker, if they’re alive, and we can prove it, they need to go to jail,’” she said. “We’re seeing what we can do. If that works, we’ll add that to the bill.”

Fudge and Oker, flanked at the radio station by fellow Dozier survivor Roy Connelly all perked up after Saltzman’s remarks. Fudge said that the proposal “absolutely” sounded like justice.

“It sounds terrific. It’s news to our ears that we haven’t heard before,” Fudge added.

Huntly agreed. “It’s the first time I’ve heard anybody even sound remotely of kind to help us,” he said.

We’ll see.

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This article appears in Nov 23-29, 2023.