We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys

by Erin Kimmerle

Overview

"With We Carry Their Bones, Erin Kimmerle continues to unearth the true story of the Dozier School, a tale more frightening than any fiction. In a corrupt world, her unflinching revelations are as close as we'll come to justice." –Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer-Prize Winning author of The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad

Forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle investigates of the notorious Dozier Boys School—the true story behind the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Nickel Boys—and the contentious process to exhume the graves of the boys buried there in order to reunite them with their families.

The Arthur G. Dozier Boys School was a well-guarded secret in Florida for over a century, until reports of cruelty, abuse, and “mysterious” deaths shut the institution down in 2011. Established in 1900, the juvenile reform school accepted children as young as six years of age for crimes as harmless as truancy or trespassing. The boys sent there, many of whom were Black, were subject to brutal abuse, routinely hired out to local farmers by the school’s management as indentured labor, and died either at the school or attempting to escape its brutal conditions.

In the wake of the school’s shutdown, Erin Kimmerle, a leading forensic anthropologist, stepped in to locate the school’s graveyard to determine the number of graves and who was buried there, thus beginning the process of reuniting the boys with their families through forensic and DNA testing. The school’s poorly kept accounting suggested some thirty-one boys were buried in unmarked graves in a remote field on the school’s property. The real number was at least twice that. Kimmerle’s work did not go unnoticed; residents and local law enforcement threatened and harassed her team in their eagerness to control the truth she was uncovering—one she continues to investigate to this day.

We Carry Their Bones is a detailed account of Jim Crow America and an indictment of the reform school system as we know it. It’s also a fascinating dive into the science of forensic anthropology and an important retelling of the extraordinary efforts taken to bring these lost children home to their families—an endeavor that created a political firestorm and a dramatic reckoning with racism and shame in the legacy of America.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063030244
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/14/2022
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	75,994
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Erin Kimmerle, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida and executive director of the Florida Institute of Forensic Anthropology and Applied Science at USF. She lives with her two sons outside Tampa, Florida.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Chapter 1 Opening the Earth 1

Chapter 2 New Light 13

Chapter 3 Graveyard 29

Chapter 4 The Battle of Boot Hill 46

Chapter 5 "Satan has his Seat" 62

Chapter 6 A Meeting with the Chief 83

Chapter 7 "Hell on Earth" 95

Chapter 8 "We Can't Forget … What Happened in Jackson County" 117

Chapter 9 "Oftentimes, History Doesn't Include the Good Parts" 128

Chapter 10 "Thank You All for Your Good Work" 133

Chapter 11 Reconstruction 153

Chapter 12 Identification 167

Chapter 13 "It's Not Even Past" 178

Chapter 14 "Where is He?" 184

Chapter 15 "The Unimaginable Happened at Dozier" 191

Chapter 16 "You Have the Truth on Your Side" 197

Chapter 17 What Remains 212

Acknowledgments 217

Appendix 219

Abbreviations 221

Bibliography 223

Index 231

Editorial Reviews

"With We Carry Their Bones, Erin Kimmerle continues to unearth the true story of the Dozier School, a tale more frightening than any fiction. In a corrupt world, her unflinching revelations are as close as we'll come to justice."

Colson Whitehead

01/01/2022

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Library Journal

★ 2022-04-12
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.

Kirkus Reviews

"With We Carry Their Bones, Erin Kimmerle continues to unearth the true story of the Dozier School, a tale more frightening than any fiction. In a corrupt world, her unflinching revelations are as close as we'll come to justice." — Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer-Prize Winning author of The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad

“Gripping….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.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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