Those boys’ families never knew they were being sent into a living hell to serve literally as tortured and abused slaves, many of whom died under suspicious circumstances. This cannot be sanitized. It is an ugly blight on a segment of Florida’s history and it should be remembered for its true horror to help ensure that this type of thing never happens again.

I am friends with one of the Black survivors who feels strongly that the remains and memorial should be on the Dozier Reform School grounds, and I strongly support his feelings. The Florida NAACP urges that the remains and memorial be on Dozier grounds. White survivors may be okay with an alternate location because they didn’t suffer as much as the Black children. Archaeological findings revealed that three times as many black students died and were buried at Dozier than white students ( http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-finally-know-what-happened-brutal-reform-school-180957911/ ). As a Black American citizen, I am against anything being done to minimizing the horror that was the Dozier Reform School.

To paraphrase an old saying, if we forget a horrid past, we may be doomed to repeat it. There is still enough hate and greed in this country to make Dozier-type atrocities happen again in some secluded area. The Dozier horror was horrifically shameful. An effort to hide anything about what was done to children at Dozier would be very telling in a way I would hope the perpetrators’ descendants would not want.

In all of the State of Florida’s dark, ​perverted glory, you did the things those helpless brothers say you did to them, things the people of the State of ​Florida​ can hardly stomach. The parents and relatives in F​lorida ​awarded their defenseless little boys to you, the state, to ​be place​d​ in the comfort of caring homes, ​but ​what did you do? Put them in cages and made slaves out of them. You are guilty of that​,​ State of Florida.

Now comes daylight, the truth, and you are caught with your hand in the cookie jar of guilt​. You still manage to shift the blame to someone else, your dedicated warriors​,​ but they’re dead. The State of F​lorida doesn’t have the courage to try ​to straighten up what your ​predecessors did. The State of Florida is gutless​​.​

I agree with Bob Baxter’s idea and beyond. I suggest two things, since there were two sides to the story and one side ​is hardly ever heard–the dark side​,​ to be exact. I suggest that​ since there w​ere two sides, the​ black side and ​the ​white side, reserve a part of both sides. I am from the segregated side where all that’s left is the church and a partial cottage where we were housed. Now! Take a cottage from the white side and the White House, reserve an acre or more of land and bring them together in one location on that property with a plaque engraved with the names of all the dead and missing boys over the ​s​chool​’​s 110-year span that never left F.S.B, F.I.S. Dozier ​R​eform School​.​

This symbolizes ​that what happened there and who it happened to is​ never to be forgotten. The State of Fl​orida want​s​ to erase all memory of what Jackson Co​unty​ and the State of F​lorida​ did​.​ No! Don’t send their remains to an unknown place! Let the remains stay right there until their famil​ies​ come get them and take them home. Until then,​ ​while ​their souls are still trapped where ​they’ve been for so long, that part of Florida will always be ​in a state of unrest. I am sure there are people living in that town ​that ​have no idea what their grand and great-grandparents have done.

The surviving staff members should be vetted and anyone identified as a perpetrator of abuse, should feel the full force of justice.

Those boys were systematically tortured and terrorized, the fact that this was done under sanction is a poor excuse for not erecting a memorial in memory of these young victims.